Landmines

At a school in Ukraine, four-year olds learn not to touch any of the colorful debris in their backyards. In a rural community in Zimbabwe, farmers and cattle risk their lives going out to graze.

The United States’ continued support of Ukraine has put the morality of cluster munitions squarely in the spotlight.

Over the last 18 months, there has been growing bipartisan movement in the House toward prohibiting the production, sale, transfer, and use of cluster munitions.

FCNL deplored the Biden Administration’s short-sighted and dangerous decision to supply cluster munitions for the war in Ukraine.

The majority of the world agrees that the humanitarian consequences and civilian harm caused by cluster munitions, which can kill anyone and everyone in their wide path, are unacceptable. Despite this global understanding, the United States remains an outlier in allowing the continued production and use of these immoral weapons. Now, some lawmakers are urging the Biden Administration to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, disregarding the global prohibition of these weapons and the significant danger they pose to civilians.

Transferring the weapons may bring tactical benefits but would be a strategic disaster.

Since its adoption in 2008, 123 nations have joined the Convention on Cluster Munitions. The United States isn’t one of them.

Anti-personnel landmines are “designed to be exploded by the presence, proximity or contact of a person and that will incapacitate, injure or kill one or more persons.” As they are not able to distinguish between civilians and combatants, are hard to safely destroy or remove, and often fail to self-destruct or self-deactivate, landmines continue to inflict human suffering long after a conflict ends.

On June 21, 2022 President Biden announced a near-global ban on anti-personnel landmine use by the United States, fulfilling his campaign promise to reverse the Trump administration’s anti-personnel landmine policy. Here’s what you need to know about anti-personnel landmines and U.S. policy.

Biden has restored the near-global ban on these militarily ineffective weapons, but enshrined their continued use in South Korea.