The Convention on Cluster Munitions reached its milestone 100 signatory this week at the opening of the 64th United Nations General Assembly in New York. World leaders signed, ratified, and promoted the Convention in their addresses the general debate of the sixty-fourth session, which is scheduled to conclude on 30 September 2009.

The Convention on Cluster Munitions reached its milestone 100th signatory when the foreign ministers of St Vincent and the Grenadines and of Cyprus signed on Wednesday 23 September. They are respectively the 99th and 100th signatories to the ban.

By the evening of Friday 25 September, the UN treaty section had confirmed receipt of four more ratification instruments deposited by the foreign ministers of Burundi, France, Malta, and Uruguay.  The Convention on Cluster Munitions now has 21 ratifications; it is nine ratifications short of the 30 needed to trigger entry-into-force.

With a stockpile of around 15 million submunitions that the treaty requires must be destroyed withing eight years, France joins other significant cluster munition stockpilers Germany, Japan, Norway and Spain in the prestigious group of the first 30 countries that will be responsible for bringing the Convention on Cluster Munitions into force.

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key welcomed the cluster bomb ban in his statement on 25 September. He said, “Looking back, I am proud of the role New Zealand was able to play in the negotiation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions. The government attaches priority to passing legislation to enable us to ratify this very significant treaty.”

The address contained significantly more references to disarmament than statements in recent years. Key spoke about New Zealand’s hopes for “a robust, action-oriented outcome” at the Second Review Conference of the Mine Ban Treaty. On nuclear disarmament, he said  “As a proudly nuclear-free nation … New Zealand stands ready to play its part” to “progress our vision for a world free from nuclear weapons.”

New Zealand last mentioned disarmament in its UNGA statement in 2007, including cluster munitions. At that time, Amb. Rosemary Banks stated, “New Zealand is convinced that the humanitarian harm posed by cluster munitions must be addressed urgently. We believe that the negotiation of a treaty to deal with the problems caused by cluster mines is well overdue.”

Photo © UN Photo/Erin Siegal, 25 September 2009

For more information:

• Statement by New Zealand Prime Minister John Key to 64th UNGA, 25 Sep 09
• Statement by Amb. Rosemary Banks to UNGA, 3 Oct 07
• Updates by international Cluster Munition Coalition

Comments