Ghana signs convention on cluster bombs

Page 49: Daily Graphic, December 15, 2008.
Story: Albert K. Salia
GHANA has signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) that prohibits the use of cluster bombs, a type of weapon which scatters submunitions over an area.
The convention was adopted on May 30, 2008 in Dublin and was opened for signature on December 3, 2008 in Oslo.
It will, however, come into force after Parliament has ratified it.
The Minister of State at the Ministry of the Interior, Nana Obiri Boahen, who led Ghana’s delegation to sign the convention, explained to the Daily Graphic that the treaty allowed certain types of weapons with submunitions that did not have the indiscriminate area effects or posed the unexploded ordnance risks of cluster munitions.
Such weapons, he said, must meet strict criteria for a minimum weight, a limited number of submunitions, the capacity for each submunition individually to detect and engage a single target object and the presence of electronic self-destruct and self-deactivation mechanisms.
Nana Boahen said under the treaty, a limited number of cluster and submunitions could also be kept for purposes of training in and development of detection, clearance and destruction techniques and counter-measures.
He said Ghana, as a peaceful country, was delighted to be part of the process to address the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions, especially when it would ensure that “there will be no victims and survivors of cluster munitions”.
He said Ghana would take the necessary steps to ensure that Parliament ratified the convention as soon as practicable after the elections.
Nana Boahen called on other states to ratify the convention so that the implementation process could start as soon as possible and stigmatise any future use of cluster munitions.