Photo Gallery Deadly Cluster Bombs
Over 100 nations gathered in Oslo on Wednesday to sign a ban on cluster bombs.
However, the biggest producers, including the United States, Russia and China, were not in Norway for the ceremony. Campaigners hope that the stigma associated with the bombs will still persuade these countries to abandon them.
The munitions take the form of bomblets that are scattered from planes or artillery shells.
The bombs often lie undetonated for years, posing a huge danger to farmers clearing land or children who mistake them for playthings.
The agreement bans the majority of current designs of cluster bombs and requires signatory states to destroy their stockpiles within eight years.
During the Lebanon-Israeli war in 2006 hundreds of thousands of cluster bombs were dropped on southern Lebanon. Israel along with the US, Russia, China, India and Pakistan, did not attend the talks in Dublin.
Rasha Zayoun, 16, at home in southern Lebanon. She was maimed by a bomb dropped by Israel in 2006.
Norway has been a strong supporter of the ban. The Norwegian People's Aid trained this all-woman clearance team to search for cluster bombs in southern Lebanon.
Laos, in South East Asia, has been particularly badly effected. Cluster bombs still litter the countryside after US forces dropped millions of the bomblets during the Vietnam War.
Ta Duangchom is one of the victims. A cluster bomb exploded in front of him, leaving him with no arms and just one eye. He is now a campaigner for the international ban.
Thomas Nash of the Cluster Munitions Coalition, an umbrella group of 300 organizations, expects the stigma of the ban will have an effect. "Even big countries like Russia dont want to be associated in the media with having used cluster bombs."
