Foreign Affairs Committee on March 1st, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Bonjour, mes collègues. Good morning. Welcome to the 43rd meeting of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. It's Thursday, March 1.

Today we are going to have a number of testimonials. A number of witnesses will appear and give us briefings on the issue of cluster bombs. We passed a motion--unanimously, I believe--dealing with cluster bombs a number of weeks ago, so we are very thankful to the group for appearing here today.

In our first hour we'll hear from Steve Goose, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Arms Division; Paul Hannon, the executive director of Mines Action Canada; Simon Conway, director of Landmine Action in the U.K.; and Isabelle Daoust, an international humanitarian law advisor from the Canadian Red Cross.

We look forward to your testimony as this committee meets. We will give you the opportunity for opening comments; try to keep them close to 10 minutes. Then we'll proceed into a round of questioning.

We'll begin with Mr. Hannon.

[Paul Hannon, Executive Director, Mines Action Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, members, for inviting us. It's both a pleasure and a privilege for us to speak to you.

I represent Mines Action Canada, a coalition of 40 Canadian NGOs that work on victim-activated weapons. Probably the best known of those would be land mines. We worked very much with parliamentarians and our government on the Ottawa treaty, implementing that treaty, but we also work on other weapons that cause problems to civilian populations. Munitions cluster bombs are one of those.

This week across Canada it's the eighth annual Canadian Landmine Awareness Week. Events commemorate the success and acknowledge the success of the Ottawa treaty, but also recommit Canadians to finishing the job we have begun on land mines.

Today, March 1, as part of that week, is a day of action on cluster bombs--cluster munitions--both here in Ottawa and in other cities across the country. I and my colleagues, Simon Conway and Steve Goose, have just returned from Oslo, where 46 countries, including our own, signed on to a declaration agreeing to come up with a new treaty within two years to prohibit cluster bombs that cause unacceptable harm to civilian populations.

We're happy to report back to you on that and answer any questions you may have, in particular because you passed a very important motion here, and we greatly appreciate that. It was very helpful to our efforts, and I think it's very helpful for Canada. I note that Canada has basically already committed to two of the five things in that motion.

We are, of course, here to see if we can push that forward and get all five of those things implemented, but we will be very happy to answer any questions after our introductory remarks, either to provide you with facts that you may need or to provide our perspective on the road forward and what's needed in terms of the treaty development and in terms of Canada's activities.

You've already introduced our colleagues. I'll introduce each of them in a little more detail as we start and then let them speak for a few minutes to you.

First is Simon Conway. He's from Landmine Action, a British organization that does mine clearance research and advocacy. It's probably the pre-eminent organization in the country. Simon himself is an ex-British soldier and a former de-miner, so he brings quite a broad perspective to this issue. He has been to most of the countries affected by clusters, most recently Lebanon, and his organization last week released a very important study on Kosovo.

I'm going to turn it over to Simon to give you a few words.

[Simon Conway, Director, Landmine Action (UK)]

I thought I would start with a quote from January of this year, from Afghanistan. A NATO spokesman, a British military officer, Brigadier Richard Nugee, said, “The single thing that we have done wrong and we are striving extremely hard to improve on [in 2007] is killing innocent civilians.”

It seems to me that highlights one of the pitfalls of modern warfare and also the point that modern warfare has changed. This is where the responsibility to protect civilians clashes up against a requirement to achieve a military objective and where we need to consider whether our weapons systems are appropriate for our objective.

I'll just very briefly describe what a cluster munition is. A cluster munition has two parts. You have the container and then the submunitions inside it--very much like peas in a pod. The container might be an air-drop bomb, it might be a rocket, or it might be an artillery shell. You may have scores, sometimes hundreds, of individual explosive submunitions inside each container.

The submunitions themselves usually have a small amount of explosives. Most submunitions are about the size of a fist or a D-cell battery. They contain explosives. Usually there's a fragmentation sheath around them that will turn into shrapnel. Invariably there's a copper cone that inverts on detonation and creates a molten slug of metal that is supposed to pierce armour. So the idea is that it will pierce through a tank and then rattle around inside.

Often, also particularly with the air-drop ones, you have an incendiary in them, usually zirconium. That will turn into fire. So the effects, usually, of a submunition exploding are blast, fragmentation, shrapnel, molten metal, and fire. As I said, you may have scores, hundreds, of these inside an individual rocket.

Let me give you an example. The multiple-launch rocket system is a track platform that fires rockets. It can fire 12 rockets and each rocket will have inside it 644 little submunitions. That means that at a press of a button, a multiple-launch rocket system will deliver 7,728 of these individual submunitions over an area the size of a square kilometre.

When I was in the military, when I was training just before the Gulf War, we used to call these grid-square removal machines. That filled me with a certain euphoria as a training soldier. I consider now, in the battles that we fight, whether it is really appropriate to use a weapons system that will carpet bomb or certainly saturate an area the size of a square kilometre.

In most of these weapons systems, when the individual containers break open and disperse, the peas from the pod will spread over an area of two to four soccer pitches. That may be okay in an open scenario, but in an urban area or in a populated area, that will spread unexploded submunitions over a wide area.

That's what they are.

What were they designed for? In essence, cluster munitions were designed for use against large, armoured infantry formations, predominantly the Warsaw Pact coming across the central European plain. We were fighting a last-ditch defence of democracy. That's what I dug in on the German plains for. We were, if I may put it crudely, going to throw everything but the kitchen sink at them in an effort to delay the progress of our enemy.

In those circumstances, I suppose you could say we didn't have the luxury to consider whether these weapons were particularly accurate or whether they worked as intended. That war, what is called industrial war--and I would refer to General Rupert Smith's book The Utility of Force, which was recently published--didn't happen and we don't fight those kinds of wars now. The wars we fight now are what General Rupert Smith calls wars amongst the people. We are fighting in populated areas, in urban areas. We are not fighting a defensive war against massive armoured columns coming at us. We are intervening in other countries. We are intervening on humanitarian grounds. We are intervening to prevent imminent threat to us. We are fighting for the will of the people in those circumstances. We are trying to win hearts and minds.

Now, if by our choice of weapons systems we kill large numbers of civilians, and as a result we antagonize the local population and we create a strong national and international public reaction.... The classic example of this is Lebanon recently. What possible purpose was served by massive bombardment, something like 4 million submunitions dropped on a heavily populated area of southern Lebanon, with a consequent huge public and international reaction?

I wouldn't single out Lebanon, though, as being exclusive. If you look back, there was the use of cluster munitions in Iraq in 2003, the attack on al-Hilla, which was documented by Human Rights Watch, where hundreds of civilians were injured when cluster munitions were used by U.S. forces in a populated area. In March 2003, the U.K. dropped 98,000 individual submunitions in and around Basra, killing people in their homes, killing children in their homes. Now, what possible military objective is achieved by doing that?

Because if you do this, if you create large numbers of civilian casualties, if you create this public reaction, you are unlikely to achieve your political goals.

Finally, on a point about the military utility of these weapons--and our report on Kosovo has just come out--these weapons really have never actually worked as intended. We dropped about 235,000 submunitions--this is the U.S., the U.K., and the Netherlands--on Kosovo in May and June of 1999. According to the NATO strike data that we've been analyzing, of strikes on mobile targets--this is mass groups of tanks--out of 269 individual strikes in which multiple canisters, the tens of thousands of submunitions, were used, less than 75 of those strikes, less than 30%, actually achieved any damage on the targets.

I was in Kosovo in June 1999, and we just didn't see any tanks. Now, they had a couple of days to move stuff out, but they really didn't have enough time to move out huge columns of damaged vehicles. There really wasn't the scale of damage. I've heard General Sir Hugh Beech of the Institute of Strategic Studies, another British military officer, say that we may have destroyed as few as 30 items of military equipment with the 78,000 that were dropped by the U.K. Out of that 234,000, about 78,000 of them were dropped by the U.K., and we may have destroyed as few as 30 items of military equipment.

It is very unclear to me where these weapons have really been a force decider, where they have...and this is something to push ministries of defence on, to justify themselves.

Then, finally, the other issue is simply that they're unreliable; they fail in huge numbers. I first saw this in Kosovo in June 1999, where we saw large numbers of unexploded cluster bombs. I've seen it in Southeast Asia. I've seen it in places like Eritrea--

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I'll just interrupt you for a moment, so we can get an idea on the timing.

Mr. Goose, you have a presentation, as well as Madam Daoust?

[Simon Conway]

I'll finish up now.

My key argument is that the nature of warfare has changed, and we fight something else now. We fight something called war amongst the people, and the weapons systems that we choose should reflect that. They need to be more discriminatory. They need to be smarter. And if we use weapons systems that kill large numbers of civilians at the time of the attack and for years afterwards, then we will not achieve our political goals.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Conway.

Ms. Daoust.

[Isabelle Daoust, International Humanitarian Law Advisor, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Canadian Red Cross]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'll speak in French, with your permission.

Obviously, like my colleagues here present, the Red Cross as a whole is very much concerned by the legal problems and the humanitarian consequences of cluster munitions. Today I would like to send a message to parliamentarians and the government. It is the message of the Red Cross, which last year issued a call to all governments concerning the following three points.

The first point is to put an end to the use of cluster munitions, which are inaccurate and unreliable. The second point is to prohibit the use of those munitions against military objectives, if those military objectives are located in inhabited areas. The third point of the Red Cross's call is to eliminate stocks of these munitions, which are inaccurate and unreliable and, pending the destruction of those stocks, to prohibit their transfer.

Mr. Chair, I would like to explain to you how we have come to these conclusions. First, we relied on legal bases and, second, on the humanitarian consequences that we have observed in the field.

Our analysis is based on international humanitarian law. When I say international humanitarian law, I refer mainly to the four Geneva Conventions and to the two additional protocols, which contain all the rules applicable in armed conflicts and which specifically contain rules related to the conduct of hostilities. Consequently, we're talking about weapons that are already governed by law, by specific and general rules. I'd like to cite a few of those rules to you.

The first is the rule of distinction, which requires that combatants in the field draw a distinction between civilians and military personnel. The second is the rule of prohibition against indiscriminate attacks. The third rule is the rule of proportionality, that is to say that attacks that can be expected to cause loss of human lives among the civilian population must not be excessive relative to the actual military advantage that is sought to be achieved. Another important rule is the rule of precautions that combatants must take before launching attacks. There is also a rule concerning protection of the environment, that is to say that it is prohibited to use weapons that might cause serious, lasting, extensive damage to the environment, and which are designed for that purpose. Lastly, there is a rule concerning superfluous injury, that is to say that it is prohibited to use weapons that are likely to cause superfluous injury among civilians or combatants.

I want to clarify one point. When international humanitarian law was negotiated, following the Second World War, all military imperatives were clearly taken into consideration at the same time as humanitarian requirements. This is a law that therefore seeks to establish a balance between these two tensions. Each of the rules that were developed is designed to strike a balance between military imperatives and humanitarian requirements.

Our concerns are that these weapons do not meet the rules that I have just cited, either in their use or in the specific characteristics thereof.

My second point obviously concerns humanitarian consequences. The Red Cross is present in various conflicts in more than 80 countries around the world. Since the late 1990s, our delegates in the field have obviously been able to document the very serious humanitarian impact of these weapons in situations such as those in Laos, Afghanistan, Iraq, Southern Lebanon, Kosovo, and I could name many more.

What is shocking for us is that civilians are already suffering enough in these conflicts. With this kind of weapon, we're still seeing human losses, injuries, deaths, particularly among children, 10, 20 or 30 years after the conflict. So we have legal concerns about compliance with the law, but especially about humanitarian concerns associated with the consequences of the use of these weapons.

I believe I'll stop there, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madame Daoust.

Mr. Goose.

[Steve Goose, Executive Director, Arms Division, Human Rights Watch]

I tend to speak extemporaneously, but it was my understanding that for translation purposes you like to have written statements. So I prepared one, and I will read just part of it, if we're concerned about time.

We do very much appreciate this committee's recognition of the importance of this cluster munition issue. Indeed, we're at a special moment in time when governments and civil society are once again coming together, in response to a humanitarian imperative, to create a treaty that will save countless lives in the future.

This happened successfully with the anti-personnel land mine crisis 10 years ago. It can happen again now with respect to deadly cluster munitions, if the political will is there, if governments can again show courage and compassion, and if dubious military interests are not allowed to take precedence over well-documented humanitarian concerns.

Perhaps Canada above all other nations should be at the forefront of this endeavour to eradicate inaccurate and unreliable cluster munitions. It was Canada's vision, commitment, and caring that largely brought about the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. It has largely been Canada's ongoing dedication and hard work for the past decade that made this treaty such a success.

Canada's leadership is needed again, but thus far Canada has been slow to respond, indeed reluctant to respond to that call. We were pleased that Canada attended the just concluded Oslo conference on cluster munitions and that it joined 45 other nations in supporting a declaration committing to the conclusion of a new treaty in 2008—a very rapid deadline—that prohibits cluster munitions, which cause unacceptable harm to civilians.

Canada was absent from a similar, although weaker, declaration last November in the Convention on Conventional Weapons, the CCW. Given Canada's absence from that declaration, this was a significant development in Oslo.

We were also pleased with the announcement that Canada will destroy the remainder of its existing stockpile of cluster munitions, its 155mm artillery projectiles with submunitions.

But there's much more that Canada can do. The best place to start, as this committee has already demonstrated, would be to announce, effective immediately, a moratorium on use, production, import, or export of cluster munitions until a new treaty is concluded.

Austria made such an announcement in Oslo last week. Apparently the Canadian Forces have never used cluster munitions, but it's worth noting that one Canadian company, Bristol Aerospace Limited, lists among its products an unguided, air-to-surface rocket cluster munition, the CRV7, which is a 70mm rocket that contains M73 submunitions.

Internationally it's important that Canada not just join the new process launched in Oslo, as a somewhat reluctant latecomer; Canada should play a leading role, in part because it's the right thing to do at the national level, and because it's consistent with Canada's strong position on humanitarian affairs and its pioneering efforts to emphasize human security. It's also because of the effect that Canada's leadership will have internationally. Because of the Ottawa process on landmines and Canada's sustained leadership there, the country has developed great expertise and experience relevant to promoting this cluster munition initiative outside of the CCW.

Canada has the reputation and the respect that can bring many other countries into a new process. We have much concern that if Canada does not fully embrace this effort to combat dangerous cluster munitions, many other countries will stay away, concluding that if it is not important for Canada, the guardian of the land mine treaty, it cannot be important for them either.

We've been concerned with some comments, which the government has made, that seem to indicate they still want to take a go-slow approach and put some emphasis on the CCW as the most viable forum for addressing cluster munitions, in part because some of the major users and stockpilers of the weapon, such as the U.S., Russia, and China, are part of the CCW but not yet part of this outside process.

This is, at the least, an ironic approach in that the Ottawa process on mines arose from the failure of the CCW to deal adequately with anti-personnel mines, just as this new process on clusters comes on the heels of CCW failure to deal with the issue.

There should be no pretense that the CCW can deal urgently or effectively with cluster munitions.

In questions, I'd be happy to elaborate many reasons why the CCW will not produce on this issue and an outside process can.

Canada has also given indications that it is putting some faith into a technical fix for the cluster munition problem, with talk of future acquisition of cluster munitions with low failure rates. This will not work. Simon has pointed out already the degree to which those who claim failure rates don't meet those rates. Lebanon very clearly demonstrated that submunitions with low failure rates in pristine testing conditions don't come close to meeting those specifications when used in combat conditions. This failure rate approach also doesn't deal with the other half of the problem with cluster munitions, which is their indiscriminate wide area effect. Failure rates won't help that.

When cluster munitions are used, they're used irresponsibly, whether it's in Lebanon in 2006, Iraq in 2003, Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, Kosovo in 1999, or going all the way back to Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s. They're used irresponsibly even by some of the nations that profess to scrupulously adhere to international humanitarian law. They are used in huge numbers. They are used in populated areas. Old, outdated models are used even when new models are available. Despite any good intentions, in actual combat, cluster munitions--these weapons with such inherently dangerous characteristics--are used irresponsibly.

I've heard that there is special concern here about the impact a prohibition on cluster munitions may have on Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan. We were talking about this last night. It's hard for us to envision what the military requirement for cluster munitions would be in Afghanistan at this moment. But more to the point, we know what happened when the U.S. used clusters there in 2001 and 2002. Human Rights Watch went in and did an investigative mission for just over a week, and we identified more than 100 civilians who had been killed by cluster munitions. Many more, undoubtedly, were injured, and there were undoubtedly many more whom we weren't able to locate.

Cluster munitions caused more civilian casualties in Iraq in 2003 and in Kosovo in 1999 than any other weapons system. The unacceptable risks to civilians are clear.

Simon talked about the degree to which the military utility of clusters has been overstated. There's also an issue related to the military dangers of cluster munitions. Cluster munitions undeniably hinder the mobility of your own armed forces and endanger your own troops. We have an action report from the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division following its fighting in Iraq in 2003, which called cluster munitions “losers”-- their word, not mine--and said that they were a relic of the Cold War. More than 80 U.S. soldiers were killed by U.S. submunition duds in the 1991 Gulf War. That's U.S. submunitions killing U.S. soldiers.

In the two dozen or so countries where cluster munitions have been used, they've been used with horrific effect. But in truth, this is a humanitarian disaster still waiting to happen. We count about 75 countries that stockpile the weapon and 34 that produce. There are millions and millions of cluster munitions already in stock that contain billions of submunitions. If these billions of submunitions get transferred, shipped around to new countries, including possibly to non-state actors--we recently documented the use of cluster munitions by Hezbollah--and if they get used, or even if a small portion gets used, this would make the landmine prices pale in comparison.

But if we act urgently, we can avert this new crisis. A treaty that prohibits cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm would be one of the most significant steps that governments could take to protect civilians from the effects of armed conflict and the aftermath of armed conflict. Public outrage at cluster munitions is already strong and is growing every day. It's time for Canada to move to the forefront of those nations committed to ending the suffering caused by cluster munitions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Before we go to our first round of questions, I just want to quickly ask something. I haven't really heard--and I've listened intently--a really clear definition of how big a bomb.... I know the difference between a bomb and a grenade. I don't know if you tried to define it. How big is it before we refer to it as a cluster bomb? Something like a grenade launcher--that wouldn't be a bomb yet, would it?

[Simon Conway]

Probably the smallest cluster bombs we find are artillery shells that might contain, on average, somewhere between about 40 and 60 individual explosive submunitions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Do you mean that something inside this rocket or bomb is an explosive device in itself, not just shrapnel that gets projected out?

[Simon Conway]

If you imagine the pea in the pod, the pod is the container. That might be a shell or a rocket or an aircraft bomb. That breaks open and lots of peas fall out. Each of those peas is a submunition, an explosive item in its own right, with its own shrapnel sheath and its own explosive and fuse.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Good. I think it's good to get that on the record as a clear indication.... I know Ms. Daoust referred to the definition in humanitarian law of a cluster bomb, but I just wanted to get that on the record.

You said that 75 countries probably have these and 34 produce them. Is that correct? Is there a list?

All I've heard, to be quite frank, is that the United States, Canada, and Great Britain have these. But there are 75 countries, and they're here on this list?

[A voice]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Okay, thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Eyking.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It's great to see the group here this morning. Canada has been I think a leader in land mines and demining.

I'm from Cape Breton, where we have a group as well. Paul, you're probably aware of them. It's Canadian International Demining Corps, an NGO. They remind me of what they're doing and what they want. They are doing a big job with the dogs. And you probably know Irving Schwartz.

I guess this is why you're in front of our committee, because we're hoping that Canada can also take a lead on cluster bombs.

I have three questions. The first one you have alluded to already, but are we using them in our Canadian army? And if we stopped using them, would that have a major effect on the way we do our military exercises? Would that leave us with disadvantage out there in any exercises we're doing? Also in the opening statement, you mentioned there were five recommendations. I think you said we are following three of them and there are two that we're not doing, or that we're doing two or three. Can you allude a bit to those?

[Paul Hannon]

I can answer all of those questions, I think.

Canada has never used cluster munitions. To our knowledge, we've never tested them. If we implement a moratorium, and we conclude a treaty that will protect civilians from those that cause harm, this will not affect our military capability at all. We haven't used them yet, and we have a very capable military force. Whether it's for peacekeeping or combat, this should not impinge on them whatsoever.

In terms of the recommendations this committee passed in its motion, there were five points. The first was that Canada join the 26 countries that were leading the efforts. Well, that's now up to 46 after Oslo, and Canada did join. We're appreciative of that. Of course, we'd like to see Canada be in the small leadership group of that and really move this forward. As Steve said, we have a lot of experience and expertise from the land mines issue. We know how to leverage our resources extremely well and very effectively to help build international alliances and coalitions, and to move forward.

The second thing that Canada is meeting in terms of your motion is to complete destruction of the cluster munitions in our stockpile. In Oslo our representatives from Canada did clearly state that Canada is in the process of destroying the remaining stockpile it has. The Minister of National Defence has written to one of our members indicating that they have no plans to acquire new clusters.

So we think the second point in your motion, about a moratorium, is a logical conclusion from that. We have agreed that we're going to negotiate a treaty within two years. We're destroying our stockpile, and we have no plans to buy new clusters. We think it's totally logical that we would support a moratorium and that Canada would implement one while that treaty negotiation is going on. It would be both illogical and irresponsible for us to acquire any cluster munitions while those negotiations were going on. We could buy something that could be illegal after the negotiations. Then we'd put ourselves in quite a quandary, and unnecessarily so. So it's perfectly logical to us that Canada would join a moratorium. That would really help move this issue forward.

One of the other points in your motion that we think is very important for Canada to consider is that we need policy coherence. The organization you mentioned, the Canadian International Demining Corps, is now working in Lebanon with Canadian money to help provide risk education to the civilian population there on the areas they shouldn't go in; they are now contaminated with cluster munitions. Many of those areas have already been cleared of landmines. So now the international community is going in and re-clearing an area that's already been cleared; we're spending money to either clear that or to protect and warn civilians of the dangers of that area, and at the same time we do not have any policies that prohibit the use of weapons that cause that problem.

If we don't have policies like an international treaty and strong national legislation, we are going to have the disaster that Steve Goose alluded to, because there are billions of these in the stockpiles in the world. And they're not useful in modern warfare.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You have another minute, Mr. Eyking.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Okay.

Most of the countries or states you have listed here are in NATO, or the majority look to be in NATO. What's the sense coming out of Brussels on this? Where are they at with this? Do they have a policy or statement?

In other words, what are the vibes coming out of NATO and Brussels on cluster bombs, and where do they want to go?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

A very quick answer.

[Steve Goose]

There is no unified position on cluster munitions within NATO. However, the majority of members of NATO are part of this group of 46 nations that committed to a new treaty within a two-year period of time. On this issue they will have to devise some approach that will allow them to continue to operate, much in the way they did with anti-personnel mines. Now only one member of NATO is not a member of the Mine Ban Treaty.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Patry, very quickly.

[Bernard Patry, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Hannon, you didn't answer the second question from my colleague Mr. Eyking, and that was with regard to the motion. You, or perhaps Mr. Goose, said there were just two or three of the five recommendations that Canada said they would fulfill for the moment. What are those two or three recommendations?

[Paul Hannon]

My apologies. The two that I think Canada is responding to in your motion are to join the 26 countries, which are now 46, and to complete the destruction of the stockpiles. Those two are in process. The three that aren't are the moratorium, the policy coherence on clearance and use, and the ratification of protocol V.