This week I want to congratulate Bolivia. On 8 April, the Chamber of Deputies of the Plurinational Assembly voted by unanimity to support the proposed law to ratify the Oslo Convention on Cluster Munitions.
The Oslo Convention is the most significant arms control agreement of recent years. It came into force on 1 August 2010 and obliges all States Parties to prohibit the manufacture, use, stockpile and transfer of cluster munitions. Many thousands of innocent men, women and children have been killed or maimed by these terrible weapons in conflicts across the globe. The world is a better place without such weapons.
The unanimous vote – not a common event in recent years in the Plurinational Assembly! – is a strong signal that Bolivia is living up to its pacifist calling. Bolivian delegates played an important part, alongside the United Kingdom and many other countries, in negotiating the Convention over several years of debate. The UK ratified the Oslo Convention last year, and is rapidly destroying the stockpiles of such munitions that it possessed. The vote in the Chamber of Deputies is one more important step towards universal adherence to this most humanitarian of causes.