On 22 and 23 February, the Norwegian government hosted a meeting of 49 states to discuss cluster munitions. Cluster bombs consist of a canister which breaks apart to release a large number of small bombs. They have been used in conflicts, most recently in Lebanon, where they have caused preventable, predictable, and unacceptable suffering. Their indiscriminate nature exerts a horrendous toll on civilians caught in a strike, and the high failure rate of submunitions (small explosive-filled or chemical-filled items designed for saturation coverage of a large area) means that they remain long after the conflict, acting like landmines, to cause injuries and deaths, and preventing access to land on which people's livelihoods depend.

The Norway meeting was a groundbreaking event. Forty-six states signed up to a declaration that agreed to conclude, by 2008, a legally binding international treaty that will prohibit the use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions that cause harm to civilians.

Up to this point, the UK government's position on clusters had been disappointing. The UK is a major user of the weapons, and claims that they balance military utility with humanitarian impact, but these assertions are not backed up by evidence.

The UK had said that progress should be achieved only within the formal CCW process (Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons), the UN forum that failed to produce a ban on landmines, and is equally unlikely to produce effective and speedy controls on cluster munitions.

However, in a last minute change of heart, after pressure from governments and NGOs, including Oxfam, the UK delegation did sign up to the declaration at the Norway conference. This is very welcome, and we will continue to press the UK to remain true to the spirit of this conference, putting an end to the suffering caused by cluster munitions.