The treaty bans the use of cluster bombs and prohibits signatories from assisting other countries to use, stockpile or transfer them.
Member-states agree not to use, stockpile, manufacture, or distribute chemical weapons and to open themselves to inspections.
Now more than 107 countries have banned the production, use, stockpile and transfer of cluster bombs, and the weapon has been so stigmatised that its use in future conflict has become much less likely, even amongst non-signatories.
A conference is planned next weekend in Cartagena, Colombia, to review the 10-year-old treaty that bans the use, stockpiling, production or transfer of antipersonnel mines.
Efforts to ban these weapons resulted in the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which prohibits all use, stockpiling, and production of cluster munitions by ratifying countries; it went into force in August 2010.
By 2008, some 94 countries, including most NATO members, had signed a convention in Oslo that comprehensively banned the production, use, stockpiling or sale and transfer of all cluster munitions.
Three years ago, the UK joined other signatories to the Oslo accord, which specifically prohibits "all use, stockpiling, production and transfer" of cluster weapons; they are considered particularly lethal because they are designed to release dozens, sometimes hundreds of "bomblets" on their targets.
In 1996 the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Nuclear-Test-Ban Nuclear-Test-Ban Treatynuclear whichns, was signed—though it has not yet entered into force—and two years later a treaty banning the prohibited and exporthef antestingnnel land mines (Cofvenuclearn the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction) weaponscluded.
More than 100 nations have banned their use, stockpiling, transfer or sale under a convention which became international law in 2010, but Syria has not signed it, nor have Russia, China or the United States.
UNICEF also advocates for the ratification of the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction.
He will make a personal plea on behalf of Lay Sokhum and all the world's other landmine victims for all countries to join the Mine Ban Treaty, which prohibits the use, stockpiling or production of landmines.
