Of Cluster Bombs And Wheelchair Basketball

VIENTIANE - I am on a basketball court in the capital of Laos. The shouts of the players and the cheers from onlookers bounce off the walls of the brightly lit gym as we race between baskets, dribbling, passing, shooting - all from our wheelchairs. I am not disabled but the special sports chair I am strapped into levels the play­ing field for those among us who are physically impaired. In theory. In reality, the field is anything but level. The disabled players who have practiced and competed here at the National Rehabilita­tion Centre (NRC) are much more adept at the sport of wheelchair basketball, which demands an athletic stamina and dexterity that many of us guest participants have never known and will never acquire.

The makeup of our audi­ence is as unusual as that of the two teams on the court. In suits and ties and other eve­ning

attire, foreign diplomats and representatives from international humanitarian organizations - including our own U.S.-based nonprofit, Clear Path International - have come via multiple buses from many hotels throughout Vientiane to visit programs run by the Cooperative Or­thotic and Prosthetic Enter­prise, or COPE, in partner­ship with the NRC. This is just one of many side events offered at the First Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It is appropriate that the four-day conference (Nov. 9-12) is being held in the country most heavily bombed with this type of ord­nance during the war in Indo­china, a region which, more than three decades later, has the largest cluster munitions problem in the world. Roughly 3 million tons of bombs were dropped on Laotian soil, the major­ity of which were cluster munitions. It's estimated that a third of those failed to explode on impact and lay dormant, sometimes for many years, until disturbed by a curious child, farmer or another villager. Thousands of people have been killed or maimed here since 1963 and unexploded ordnance (UXO) continues to claim about 300 lives here each year. About half of all victims are children who discover the ball-shaped cluster munitions or "bombies" while playing near their rural villages.

Clear Path International, which provides medical and socio-economic assistance to UXO victims, their families and their communities in oth­er Southeast Asian Countries and in Afghanistan, is just beginning a new program in Lao PDR with funding from the U.S. Department of State Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement.

Our organization is launching a program in part­nership with the Lao Wom­en's Union to support home-based businesses among the disadvantaged disabled in Xieng Khuang Province, one of the most heavily bombed corners of Laos.

The conference has pro­vided a perfect introduction for me and four others from CPI to the ongoing and un­met needs of people here, and to the programs already help­ing war victims reclaim their dignity, health and economic security.

The meeting brings to­gether state parties to the treaty, United Nations agen­cies, international organiza­tions, civil society and cluster bomb survivors to lay the groundwork for implement­ing the convention adopted two years ago and translat­ing its objectives into action. The convention establishes international law to ban the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster muni­tions and mandates their destruction.

On May 30, 2008, fol­lowing negotiations in Dub­lin, 107 states adopted the convention. That same year, 94 governments signed the treaty in Oslo. Early this year, the convention achieved a milestone when the 30th ratificationwas deposited at the UN, triggering its entry into force on Aug. 1, when it became binding international law.

As of this writing, with the current meeting still in progress, 108 countries had signed and 43 of those had taken the next step and ratified the convention, be­coming state parties legally bound by its provisions. While the United States is not a signatory to this treaty or the Ottawa Treaty that bans landmines, it has spent billions of dollars clearing unexploded ordnance and providing support services for victims in numerous countries. CPI programs in Vietnam, Cambodia, along the Thai-Burma border, in Afghanistan, and now in Laos have been made possi­ble by such funding and that from many private-sector donors. And the five of us here on behalf of CPI, our executive director, myself as com­munications director, and program managers from the countries in which we work are proud to participate in this historic event. I know my colleagues took great pleasure in documenting my own performance on the bas­ketball court in dress pants and pumps no less.