Cluster munitions are larger shells or casings which contain dozens to hundreds of submunitions. They are designed to be dropped from aircraft or launched from artillery, and then the larger casing opens in the air and the submunitions disperse over a wide area, and then explode on impact. The problem is that the submuntions have a relatively huge failure rate (10 to 40+%), so that one ends up with submunitions which have not yet exploded littering the landscape, basically acting as antipersonnel land mines. These can sit dormant for years and years, and for instance in Laos, where the U.S. bombed heavily with cluster munitions in the 60’s and 70’s, every year farmers find and accidentally set them off while tilling the soil to grow food, or children find them while exploring and think they are toys and then get maimed or killed. This is still happening 40 years after they were originally dropped, and the Red Cross estimates that 11,000 civilians have been killed in Laos alone since the end of the war. Read the rest of this news item »