Twenty-thousand Laotians, almost half of them children, have been killed or injured by unexploded ordnance since the Vietnam war ended. It is half a century since the US stopped bombing Laos, having dropped more than 2m tons of cluster munitions; decades on, people then unborn are still paying the price. On one estimate, it will take another 100 years to fully clear the country.
This is the true cost of cluster munitions. They are not only indiscriminate in showering dozens or hundreds of bomblets over a large area, but also have a lethal legacy because so many fail to explode, only to later be trodden on or picked up – often by curious children. For these reasons, more than 120 countries have signed the convention prohibiting their use, production, transfer and stockpiling.
