Bonnie Docherty, who directs the Armed Conflict and Civilian Protection Initiative, says cluster munitions and other explosive weapons are particularly threatening Ukrainian civilians
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to unfold, international law experts and human rights advocates have trained a close eye on the kinds of weapons being deployed in the country — and their potential to hurt or even kill civilians. Of particular concern, says Bonnie Docherty ’01, an arms expert at Harvard Law School, is the reported use of cluster munitions and other explosive weapons in highly populated areas — weapons that can be difficult to control, and which have already claimed lives.
Docherty, a lecturer on law at the International Human Rights Clinic, associate director of armed conflict and civilian protection at the Clinic, and a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch in its arms division, spoke with Harvard Law Today about two deeply troubling categories of weapons, their status under international law, and what the U.S. — and the world — should do about it.
Harvard Law Today: What do we know about the types of weapons being used in Ukraine and their legality?
Bonnie Docherty: There are two categories I want to mention: cluster munitions and explosive weapons. Just to be clear, explosive weapons as a broad category includes cluster munitions, but I want to highlight cluster munitions in particular as well.
Cluster munitions have been banned by the majority of the world under a treaty called the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which was adopted in 2008. In fact, the International Human Rights Clinic and I were part of the negotiations on that treaty [which was not signed by Russia or Ukraine]. Cluster munitions are large weapons, launched from the air or ground, which include dozens or hundreds of smaller weapons called “submunitions.” They are dangerous for two reasons. One is they spread the submunitions over a broad area, and so are indiscriminate about what they hit. And the second is that a large number of the submunitions do not explode and lay around like landmines for months, years, or even decades to come. So far, Human Rights Watch has documented the use of these weapons by Russia in multiple places, including against a hospital in the Donetska region. The Washington Post also documented, and Human Rights Watch confirmed, their use in the eastern city of Kharkiv.
Credit: Adam DetourBonnie Docherty is a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, associate director of its Armed Conflict and Civilian Protection Initiative, and a researcher at Human Rights Watch.
The second, broader category is explosive weapons, many of which are being widely used in populated areas. These weapons include rockets, missiles, artillery shells, aircraft bombs — things like that. Explosive weapons are not banned as a category, but they are very problematic when used in populated areas, which is happening widely in this conflict. They’re even more problematic when they have what we call “wide area effects,” which means they cover a broad footprint. This is for three reasons. One is they have a large blast or fragmentation radius. Two is that they’re very inaccurate. And the third is they deliver multiple munitions at once; that could be a cluster munition, as I previously mentioned, or it could be a like a Grad multiple rocket launcher that launches many rockets at the same time.
Under existing international humanitarian law, using explosive weapons, particularly when they have these wider effects, in populated areas is often considered indiscriminate and thus unlawful because they cannot distinguish between soldiers and civilians.
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Russian forces are using weapons widely banned across the world, says Harvard Law expert
