Cluster munitions are among the most harmful weapons to civilians. They are designed to disperse small bomblets indiscriminately across a wide area. The bomblets often fail to explode on initial use, littering communities with unstable unexploded ordnance and causing devastating harm to civilians for years after a conflict ends.
The International Committee of the Red Cross says that cluster munitions kill and injure large numbers of civilians and cause long lasting socio-economic problems.
The Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) is an international treaty that prohibits the use, transfer, production, and stockpiling of cluster munitions. The CCM was adopted on May 30, 2008, signed on December 3, 2008, and came into force on August 1, 2010. The treaty has been joined by 123 countries, including most NATO members, but not Russia, Ukraine, or the United States.
The Scranton plant produces 11,000 artillery shells a month but cannot keep up with the demand for killing. That the U.S. would even consider sending cluster bombs, a weapon designed to wound as many people as possible, into the Ukraine War to make up for the lack of artillery shells, is horrifying and also revealing.
The decision to transfer cluster munitions is a disturbing change of course for the U.S. Since its widespread use of the weapons in 2003, the U.S. has only used cluster munitions once, for a single strike in Yemen in 2009. The last U.S. cluster munition manufacturer ceased production in 2016.
The US weakened safety protectings by adopting a new policy on 30 November 2017 that abandons a long-standing policy requiring the US not use cluster munitions that result in more than 1% unexploded ordnance (UXO.)
Senate bill S.897 and House bill H.R.1975 (which are both dormant) proposed the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act.
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What can you do?
Write to your Senators, Congressperson and President
Become informed by following organizations such as those below
Follow and support organizations seeking to stop the US from sending cluster munitions and seeking to ban them in all countries
Help the public become informed by writing to your local news
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AFSC: Tell Congress to Stop sending cluster munitions to Ukraine
FCNL: Support Grows in Congress for Ending Transfer of Cluster Munitions
Veterans for Peace: DU, Cluster Bombs, and Landmine Working Group: Make the American public aware of the consequences of the use of these Weapons of Individual Destruction
Human Rights Watch: US Cluster Munition Transfer to Ukraine Ignores History of Civilian Harm
Facebook: Ban Cluster Bombs page
StopClusterMunitions.org: Cluster Munition Coalition web page
BBC: What are cluster bombs and why is US sending them to Ukraine?