These are real life stories from people around the world who have had contact with cluster munitions.
More Real-Life Stories and images can be found at the Image Gallery on Cluster Munitions.
To read more about the experiences of survivors of cluster munitions and their work to achieve a ban, visit the Ban Advocates web site.
Sitting on the steps of her modest house, Rum Vet, 35, shyly describes the cluster bomb explosion that left her legless from the right knee down and killed her brother nearly 25 years ago. She was just a young girl when the cluster bomb went off while she was working in the fields near her house in Kratie, which is one of Cambodia’s most heavily-bombed provinces, but she has felt the effects of the explosion her whole life.
“One day in 2003 I took my two boys down to the river to go fishing. I found a cluster bomb in the water and picked it up because I wanted to use it as an explosive, to blow up in the river so that we could catch more fish. But it went off in my hands and blew off my arms.
Safia and Fatimah Hussein’s village was subject to heavy cluster bomb bombardment during the last 72 hours of conflict in Southern Lebanon.
I lost both my legs when I found a cluster bomb I thought was a can of food. I was six years old at the time and was walking home from a picnic with my cousin and four other members of my family. My cousin was killed instantly in the blast and the rest of us were injured.
I lost my leg and damaged my sight after I accidently struck a cluster bomb in the rice fields. My family are farmers and I was working the fields as I always did.