Cluster munitions are highly unreliable weapons that do not distinguish between military targets and civilians. They scatter thousands of submunitions or “bomblets” over a vast area, and hundreds fail to explode on impact, littering the landscape with landmine-like “duds” waiting to kill or maim indiscriminately. The US maintains a stockpile of more than 700 million cluster submunitions and has used them in countries including Afghanistan, Cambodia, Iraq, Laos, Vietnam, and the former Yugoslavia. The toll taken by cluster munitions can last for years or sometimes decades, taking even more civilian lives and limbs long after a conflict has ended.

Nearly 100 countries, including many of the United States’ closest military allies, have taken action to address this humanitarian threat by signing the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), an international treaty prohibiting the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of all types of the weapon. The Convention also sets strict deadlines for the removal of dangerous cluster munition remnants, and contains groundbreaking humanitarian obligations for assistance to victims of cluster munitions.

The United States has not signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions. However, the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act of 2009, introduced in the Senate by Senators Dianne Feinstein and Patrick Leahy and in the House by Representative Jim McGovern, would represent a critical step toward ensuring that US cluster munitions no longer pose an unnecessary threat to civilians. The Act would prohibit all use of cluster munitions in areas where civilians are normally present, and it would end use of the most unreliable cluster munitions—those that leave behind more than one percent of their submunitions as explosive duds. Please urge your elected representatives to cosponsor The Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act of 2009 and support a clear, sensible US policy on cluster munitions. Learn More