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What are cluster munitions and landmines?

Cluster munitions are weapons that contain multiple explosive submunitions.

Cluster munitions typically open in mid-air and release submunitions that can cover a wide area, causing widespread and indiscriminate harm and damage. While submunitions generally explode in the air or on impact, any that do not explode can present a danger to civilians long after the weapon has been fired.

Landmines are devices placed on or just under the ground, designed to explode when a person is nearby or steps on the device. They can pose a threat for many years after they are placed. Cluster munitions and landmines kill and injure large numbers of civilians and cause long lasting socio-economic problems.

How are they treated under international law?

There are two major international conventions that address cluster munitions and landmines. These are as follows:

  • The 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions prohibits the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster munitions and requires states to ensure that they claim no further victims.
  • The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction (1997) aims to eliminate anti-personnel landmines around the world.
Ethical, Social and Environmental Impact

Controversial weapons such as these are either prohibited under international conventions or are deemed particularly controversial because of their humanitarian impact.

They include:

  • Weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear, chemical and biological weapons
  • weapons that fail to discriminate between civilians or combatants or cause disproportionate harm, such as cluster munitions or anti-personnel mines.

With investors becoming increasingly concerned about the ethical, social and environmental impact of their investments, and governments prohibiting investments in certain companies involved in nuclear weapons, landmines or cluster munitions, many financial institutions are required to ban investments in companies due to their practices being deemed unethical.

Cluster Munitions Monitoring

We maintain a cluster munition and landmine exclusion list which is a list of companies. The list is compiled based on information provided by third-party sources.

We maintain a list of cluster munition stocks, based on several data sources, including:

We also review additional data sources, including Bloomberg, Internet searches and research into environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors. Each data source is assessed according to its credibility, timeliness, and research process. The exclusion list considers publicly available data provided freely by various groups, firms and other independent bodies to enhance the scope of our restricted company list. Organisations me monitor for updates include:

Cluster Munitions Monitoring
Legislation banning investments in cluster munitions exists in the following countries:

Belgium was the first country in the world to prohibit investments in producers of cluster munitions. The 2007 law prohibits: “the financing of a company under Belgian law or under the law of another country, which is involved in the manufacture, use, repair, marketing, sale, distribution, import, export, stockpiling or transportation of anti-personnel mines and or sub-munitions within the sense of this act, and with a view to distribution thereof (…).” The law states the exact meaning of financing, which it defines as “all forms of financial support, namely credits, bank guarantees or the acquisition for own account of the financial instrument these companies have issued.”