More than 1,000 people have been killed or wounded by cluster munitions in Ukraine since Russia launched its war, a monitor said Monday, urging all countries to ban the weapons.
Since Russia began its invasion of its western neighbor in February 2022, Ukraine has registered the highest number of recorded annual cluster munition casualties in the world, the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) said in its annual report.
It said cluster bombs had been used by both sides in Ukraine and the weapons had killed and wounded more than 1,000 people there since the war began.
The vast majority of casualties were registered in 2022.
But the report said the figure for 2023 was probably a dramatic underestimate.
Cluster munitions can be dropped from planes or fired from artillery before exploding in mid-air and scattering bomblets over a wide area.
They pose a lasting threat since many fail to explode on impact, effectively acting as landmines that can explode years later.
In Ukraine, more farmland is now contaminated by cluster munition remnants than by landmines, the report said.
Before the war, Ukraine had registered no cluster munition casualties for several years.
But it recorded 916 in 2022 and it accounted for nearly half the 219 casualties recorded worldwide last year.
Underestimate
Loren Persi, head of the impact team on the project, told reporters the decrease in registered casualties between 2022 and 2023 "unfortunately may not really mean fewer people will suffer because of use in this period".
He pointed out that the team knew of "many" such attacks in Ukraine last year where no casualties were recorded, but where casualties may very well have occurred.
If the impact of all cluster munition attacks claimed by Russian media or ministries were verified, "that would be close to 900 casualties" in 2023 as well, he said.
With both Russia and Ukraine continuing to use cluster munitions, the report said it was not possible to systematically document and attribute which side was responsible for which attacks or casualties.
The report warned that new uses of cluster munitions by countries like Russia and Ukraine were undermining international efforts to ban them entirely.
Neither country is among the 112 states that are party to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, which prohibits the use, transfer, production, and storage of cluster bombs.
"Actions by countries that have not banned cluster munitions are putting civilians at risk and threatening the integrity and universality of the international treaty prohibiting these abhorrent weapons," CMC head Tamar Gabelnick said.
The only other two countries where cluster munition attacks were registered last year -- Myanmar and Syria -- have not joined the convention either.
US transfers
The United States, also not a party to the treaty, sparked an outcry over its decision in July 2023 to transfer cluster munitions to Kyiv.
In the first nine months after that decision, US President Joe Biden approved five such transfers, the report said.
Mary Wareham, the deputy crisis, conflict, and arms director at Human Rights Watch and a participant in the report, noted media reports that some of the cluster munitions had been taken from a US base in Germany, which is a party to the convention and transferred to Ukraine.
"This raises serious questions under the prohibition on assistance... with banned activities," she told reporters in Geneva.
The CMC also voiced alarm at the Lithuanian parliament's vote in July to withdraw from the treaty -- the first country to do so.
The withdrawal will take effect six months from last Friday when the country officially notified the United Nations of its decision unless it suspends the process.
Wareham described the decision as "ill-considered" and a "stain" on Lithuania's reputation.
"There are now concerns about containing what it has done and trying to ensure that it doesn't spread any further," she said.
Of the casualties reported globally in 2023, 118 were a result of cluster munition attacks.
The remaining 101 were killed or wounded by cluster munition remnants across Ukraine, Syria and Myanmar and six other countries -- Azerbaijan, Iraq, Laos, Lebanon, Mauritania, and Yemen, the report said.