Ukraine Surpasses Syria as Country With Most Cluster-Munition Casualties in the World
More than 300 people were killed and over 600 wounded by cluster munitions in Ukraine in 2022, according to an international watchdog, surpassing Syria as the country with the highest number of casualties from the controversial weapons for the first time in a decade.
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00:00 from Susan Aboyd, Arms Associate at Human Rights Watch. This year's Cluster Munition Monitor
00:06 Report shows how, once again, civilians are the primary victims of cluster munitions,
00:11 both at the time of the attack and also from their remnants. This year's edition of the Monitor
00:18 documents a shocking increase in the number of people killed and wounded in cluster munition
00:23 attacks as well as from remnants. I want to start off by saying it's unconscionable that
00:28 civilians are still dying and being wounded from cluster munitions 15 years after these weapons
00:34 were prohibited in Dublin in May of 2008. Cluster munitions are abhorrent weapons that are globally
00:42 banned because of the immediate and long-term harm that they cause to civilians. The greatest
00:47 obstacle to countries working to eradicate cluster munitions are the governments that are unwilling
00:52 to join this convention and that undermine its principles by using and transferring these weapons
00:58 when the United States announced that it would transfer an unspecified portion of its cluster
01:05 munition stocks to Ukraine for use in the war. We were appalled by that decision. We fought it
01:12 behind the scenes for the year leading up to the decision. The cluster munitions have been
01:17 transferred now. We acknowledge the international outcry over the cluster munition transfers to
01:22 Ukraine in the report, but the report does not cover how those cluster munitions are being used
01:27 right now or if there have been any casualties, civilian casualties from them. That will be
01:31 contained in next year's report and of course, Human Rights Watch will continue to track and
01:38 to monitor the use of cluster munitions by both sides. Of the 1,172 casualties recorded
01:44 by the cluster munition monitor in 2022, most of those casualties, almost a thousand,
01:51 were caused by cluster munition attacks and the vast majority of those were in Ukraine.
01:57 There were some great number of cluster munition remnants casualties in 2022. The remnants are
02:03 primarily the unexploded sub munitions from the weapon, 185. These remnants are particularly
02:12 devastating to children. They're interesting. They are often in areas where children play or
02:18 work taking animals out to the field and over 70% of casualties of cluster munition remnants
02:25 were children in 2022.