On Tuesday, February 16, Burkina Faso and Moldova ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions making the number of countries which have ratified the document thirty and making it a binding international law with effect as of August 1, 2010, the SITA newswire reported. The Slovak Republic has neither signed nor ratified the convention so far but the cabinet is expected to discuss the issue in March.
In 2009, the Cabinet committed the Defence Ministry, Foreign Ministry and Economy Ministry to elaborate a Draft Action Plan aimed at Slovakia's accession to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. The deadline expired on December 31, 2009, and a new one was set for March 31, 2010.
The director of Amnesty International Slovensko, Branislav Tichý, commented that the Slovak public, which by sending thousands of postcards and e-mails called on the ministries to ratify the Convention in the shortest time possible still has no way to find out whether and when Slovakia would adopt the document, which will save lives and health of thousands of people around the globe.
The convention that bans the production of cluster munitions, their use and storage was adopted in May 2008, and was open for signatures in December 2008 and 104 countries have signed it. SITA
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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