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It seemed to pass unnoticed by the vast majority yesterday, but the memory is still vivid of that awful moment, just after midnight August 31 1997,when Diana, Princess of Wales, was involved in that horrific Paris tunnel car crash which led to her death shortly afterwards.

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The horror, shock and simple disbelief that gripped the entire western world was a palpable force, so incredibly powerful that when her family, the Spencers, established a charitable fund in her name, $150 million worth of donations poured in within the first week.

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Diana was the first royal to break the mould of pomp and mystery surrounding the royal family, truly bringing a human touch to contact with the public, something they valued so much she was known as the people’s princess, much loved by all.

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Diana was undoubtedly, in the eyes of the British public, a victim of her own goodness, married to a man whose heart belonged elsewhere, struggling with weight problems and issues of and self-esteem, made worse by the humiliation of her very public divorce from Prince Charles, yet she still shone like a beacon.

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Bulimia and depression dogged her life, made public by an avaricious press, whose hunger for news was blamed for the car chase that led to her death, yet she was incredibly selfless. Her deep compassion about AIDS, in the early 80s, and her willingness to hug victims at a time of public paranoia about such contact, helped change the way AIDS patients were treated and endeared her even more to the public.

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As the 80s ended, she then put her life at risk often in her campaign highlighting the horror of land-mine overuse and efforts to outlaw the weapons, which led to a Nobel Peace prize in 1997.  What most appealed to everyone about this amazing woman was the simple fact of how contradictory she was.

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Born into a very wealthy family, she nonetheless had the common touch, and was fiercely independent, dropping out of school, and taking work as nanny, teacher’s aide, and housekeeper, despite the family wealth, and she would often take the unheard of step of being a royal prepared to wear jeans in public.

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Diana hated the press, but knew how to play them, dropping 30 pounds after Prince William was born and becoming fashionably thin, and prepared to drop in and visit cancer, AIDS, and leprosy patients when there was no press present, her activism seemingly truly rooted in genuine concern, creating a public image of powerful popularity, much to the disgust of the royal family.

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The biggest change that this iconic woman effected was that within the royal family itself, who could no longer distance themselves from the British people. Forced, by public opinion, to accept that her wayward ex-daughter-in-law was beloved, on The day prior to the September 6th internment Queen Elizabeth not only made a public statement expressing the family grief, but also ordered the Buckingham Palace flag to half-mast, breaking with a 1000 year-old tradition of an honor reserved for reigning monarchs only in the past.

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I was among the millions who wept buckets that day, because this incredible woman had touched me just as much as the rest of the world, her tragedy and selflessness a lesson to us all, and the cruelty of her untimely death especially poignant as she had once again, apparently found love, only to have it so savagely ripped away.

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Hard to believe that 14 years have now passed since that terrible night, but the memory of this iconic lady will always burn bright, and the Elton John tribute song, based on Candle in the Wind, about Marilyn Monroe, will forever be remembered as the epitaph of a tragic, beautiful princess who deserved so much more in life. R.I.P. Diana, you will forever be the peoples princess, and we your humble fans.

The previously war-torn country in South Asia. Sri Lanka was once devastited by war in the previous years. Leaving killer landmines in the war zones. Killing innocent civilians, including children who happen or incidentally stepped of landmines along their way.

Through the initiative of their local government, and the help of the UNICEF through the Children’s Funds. They launched the “Mine Risk Education, (MRE)” led by the UN authorities and the local agencies. Among returnees, or civilians who returned home, in the former combat zone. They found out that their place is not safe to stay. Year 2010 there were 38 persons and children were injured and 7 died by this deadly landmines. Buried  every where in this previous war zone.

The credit is due to the Mine Risk Education (MRE), through the support of the local agency and the UNICEF. In educating the young and old on how to detect landmines  if they find along their way. How to manage, defuse and most probaly get away from it, as they noticed that it is a landmine. Even children are given awareness and education, how and what, are they going to do, if incase they saw a landmine.

By this education and awareness, the said strategies, is a big help to them minimize or decline the death toll of landmine victims. For the coming year, they hoped to eradicate the landmines incidents.

            In the interim, the text will depart to discuss the possible implications of what continued use of these weapons will mean for the future of the Ottawa Treaty (the 1997 landmines Treaty), after a short discussion of the utility of this landmark legal document. After examining the legal position, the paper will discuss the issues of CB weapons in greater detail, but with the question of international law set against arms control measures always in mind. Firstly, we will introduce the subject of the mine ban as an instrument of arms control, using global consensus underpinned by normative approaches to arms proscription. 

In the beginning …

December, 1997 ushered in what was considered at the time to be a ‘new’ era in conventional arms control. The ICBL had successfully overturned received wisdom about challenging state-centric, top-down security mechanisms, with Nobel co-Laureate Jody Williams proclaiming that civil society (and by inference grass-roots activism) was the ‘world’s new superpower.’ This claim was, unsurprisingly, supported by the fact that Ottawa concluded ‘the most expeditious arms control treaty in history. As a euphoric and landmark event, Ottawa built on its initial successes by its Entry into Force in March, 1999, following the 40^th ratification by Burkina Faso six months earlier.

            Be that as it may, the efficacy of Ottawa as arms control instrument is now almost a decade old, and of course subject to evolutionary scrutiny. As many an expert observer has noted, the binding nature of this event is about withstanding the global forces that exist in an anarchic global polity, and that the myth of legal inviolability has been exploded (sic) by the recidivist attitude of State signatory Angola, that went back to using mines again despite a solemn pledge not to do so. In short, the problem here is about enforcement; and, also, about the amoral and seemingly cynical attitude that gives succour to alleged ‘pariah’ states that have remained outside Ottawa’s orbit from the outset. Moreover, and to firmly contextualise the problems of whether Ottawa is worth the paper it is written on, El Salvador’s Vice Minister of External Affairs, Sr Rene Dominguez proudly stated for the record that his country is ‘totally mine free’ when in fact the International Demining Group (IDG), a humanitarian mine clearance foundation discovered 53 new minefields since the group commenced survey operations in 1998. What this shows is that legality in the international arena may reside only in the mind of those who contemplate such matters; however, this paper will seek to expand on the notion of law as it applies to CB weapon systems.

Cluster Bombs: a legal exploration

If truth is, indeed, the first casualty of war, and that Cicero’s claim that in war the law is silent, then this leaves the paper with a number of obstacles to surmount. As, for example, a precise definition of Terrorism may be elusive and perhaps wholly subjective, the devil is often in the detail. The struggle by human rights campaigners, arms control activists, humanitarian and aid-related Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) amongst others to establish a clear link between cluster/related munitions and APM is an exercise steeped in vitriol and seeming legal sleight-of-hand. Be that as it may, there are some important aspects of the debate that need to be clarified initially, specifically the differences between APM and cluster/area weapons; they are:

• Unlike mines, Area and CB weapons platforms only become a hazard when they fail to operate in field conditions; that is, they do not ‘go off’ in operational circumstances;
• These types of weapon system require a platform capable of delivering the devices to the target, such as fixed-wing aircraft, helicopter-borne dispensers, and Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), the prohibitive costs of which effectively denies use to sub-state groups, paramilitaries, and similar organisations.

However, as most commentators would agree, unexploded area/CB weapons display remarkable similarities to landmines. Taking into account the above observations, the primary point to make is a lack of discrimination. Within the milieu of ‘moral yardstick’ proclaimed to great effect by the ICBL, therefore, it is assumed that the case for stigmatising CB weapons is watertight. However, it should be noted at this point that the legal argument falls down because of apparent chicanery by those parties (that is, the US and the UK and others) to influence the wording of the accepted definition of an AP landmine, which is:

            ‘ “Anti-personnel mine” means a mine designed to be exploded by the presence, proximity or contact of a person and that will incapacitate, injure or kill one or more persons. Mines designed to be detonated by the presence, proximity or contact of a vehicle as opposed to a person, that are equipped with anti-handling devices, are not considered to be anti-personnel  mines as a result of being so equipped.

This definition, as it stands, appears to suit the requirements of the international community. Certainly, doubters and detractors should have no problem establishing exactly what is subject to ostensibly global opprobrium. In the light of the above observations, the legal or converse status of CB weapons and related area impact munitions remains problematic, however, when considered together with APM. With reference to Ottawa and the legal status of AP mines, cluster and similar weapons platforms escaped proscription because of the widely-held perception that they are a different class of device, despite patently displaying many of the operational characteristics associated with APM.

            The principal and ongoing problem created at the time of the legal definition being formulated related to unease, mostly in the US, regarding this definition and the possible implications for the banning of CB and related devices; had the definition remained as per the direct quote above, another 35 US weapon systems would have attracted a ban, under the Ottawa Treaty. So, the Clinton Administration wanted the word ‘primarily’ inserted into the definition, as in the following: ‘ …A mine [primarily] designed to be exploded by the presence …..’  This one word insertion denotes the fact that the principal function of CB and related munitions is not to detonate via the same medium of contact or proximity as mines; in other words, the ostensible primary function of CB and similar devices is different to that of mines. However, it is quite evident that when these munitions fail to ‘go off,’ they patently assume the primary function of AP landmines, which in any event amounts to an indiscriminate form of warfare. To consider further detailed analysis is beyond the scope of this paper, but nonetheless one must persist with greater legal argument.

            Assuming that legislation formulated to end the use of APM cannot reasonably be extended to include cluster munitions, the paper must then look further afield to establish the legal validity, or otherwise, of these devices. According to the 1868 St. Petersburg Declaration, the ‘Only legitimate object that States should endeavour to during war is to weaken the forces of the enemy’ and that the employment of arms that uselessly aggravate the sufferings of disabled men, or render their death inevitable is contrary to the laws of humanity. Whilst the above refers primarily to military personnel rendered hors de combat, it precedes other formal, legal instruments designed to at least manage warfare, and further recalls that there should be a distinction between combatants and innocent civilians, a tenet that forms the bedrock of every major international convention of the 20^th century, and indeed of all new humanitarian arms control treaties. From this perspective, Ottawa has been a significant, if not universal success, at least on paper. Be that as it may, legal matters usually reside in august establishments far removed from the blood and misery of battlefields; so, in order to open up the debate and discuss implications arising, this paper will now look at the realities of CB deployment.

Bombs away: making matters worse

In the modern lexicon of a presumed just, democratic ‘New World Order,’ the protection of freedom and of saving the world from evil necessarily entails making hard choices and eradicating ‘terror’ where we find it. Using CB deployment as an example, it is possible to envisage the devastating consequences of persistent and unpredictable patters of indiscriminate injury and death both during, and after, armed conflicts around the world, and that the ‘wide area’ nature of these weapons invariably impacts on civilians to a greater degree than landmines do. Whilst the use and subsequent effects of these weapons has received a great deal of exposure resulting from events in Iraq and Afghanistan relatively recently, the history of CB use has a longer history. Laos, a country that found itself ‘in the way’ during the escalating war in Vietnam, suffered about 580,000 USAF sorties, delivering 2.3 million tonnes of bombs. On average, a plane-load of ordnance was dropped every eight minutes, around the clock, for nine years. The end result is that Laos, and indeed Indo-China geographically, were left ‘Destroyed, impoverished, and littered with [millions of] unexploded bomblets.’ In the same manner in which APM continue to blight the lives of populations infested with these weapons, Life in Laos labours under the yoke of unexploded cluster bombs with disturbing regularity; in the heavily-bombed Plain of Jars, the failure rates of these weapons reached 20-30% that directly impacts on apparent annual casualty rates of 20,000, more than half of which prove to be fatal, although in mitigation these figures from the Laotian government should be treated with a healthy degree of scepticism. However, what is not in doubt is the fact that Laos is still bedevilled by munitions dropped over a generation ago.

            Kuwait, more recently, has had to contemplate and deal with a similar problem. Given the technological imperative of newer weapons, which are better designed and have more effective killing ratios, it should be evident that the incidences of so-called ‘collateral damage’ would rise dramatically; in any event,

            ‘Hundreds of civilians were also killed by these [cluster type] bomblets. With the inordinate number of bomblets dropped in Iraq, thousands will become victims in future years. Since the end of the [1991] war, more than 2,000 Kuwaitis have been injured from bombs and munitions, and most of the casualties have been children.’ 

Moreover, 10% of US casualties were incurred by unexploded bomblets, so-called ‘friendly fire,’ during that conflict. The total quantities of bomblets released from CB pods exceeded 24,000,000 units for the duration of that war, and assuming that the failure rate did not pass 5%, then this still leaves a huge number of devices to make safe and dispose of. That said, clearance must be understood in the context of neutralisation capacity; oil-rich Kuwait is much better placed to withstand the cost of eradicating the debris of war than, say, impoverished Laos or Cambodia.

It would doubtless add to the impact of this paper to list situations in other, similarly-afflicted regions like the Balkans that have CB weapons strewn around the countryside; however, this is part of a greater whole that imagines an expanding and perhaps interminable war on terror that will feature continued deployment of these weapons platforms, which this paper will now discuss.

Cluster weapons: future imperfect?

The Global War on Terror (GWOT) will doubtless unfold, as events dictate. If current analysis is to be believed, this may well include further military incursions in the Philippines, Iran, North Korea, Columbia, or anywhere perceived to be in the bombsights of aircraft bent on finding and destroying terrorism.

            Having said that, current thinking on the military utility of CB weapons tends to bifurcate, dependent upon the approach one takes. Anti-landmine campaigners remain adamant that these devices belong firmly in the same legal category as APM, and referring specifically to the Ottawa Treaty. Thus far, the majority of states have signed up to this Convention, with the notable exception of some major arms-producing and selling nations. It is perhaps no coincidence that many of these countries have exhibited a willingness to use CB weapons, notably the US, with pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Vic Warzinsky stating that ‘Cluster bombs are a useful munition that serve a useful and valuable military purpose … I wouldn’t anticipate that we would unilaterally forego using this munition.’

            Perhaps inevitably, serious collateral damage will, as in Iraq and Afghanistan recently, result from the unconstrained use of CB weapons as the GWOT proliferates against so-called ‘states of concern.’ As this paper implies, there will be a concomitant impact on social cohesion and a haemorrhaging of populations from war zones to places of relative safety. Mass migrations through areas polluted by the lethal detritus of war will exact casualties on civilians, unless the political will can be found to formulate and effectively enforce durable arms control initiatives.

Conclusions

The apparently dispiriting tone of this paper is a reflection of 21^st Century zeitgeist, and the mood of unshackled militarism that prevails, in what is apparently an ‘ …[I]nternational and European scene [that] is as complex and uncertain as it has been since the end of the cold war.’ The paraphernalia of war is operational, active and functioning in the fragmented wastes of Afghanistan, in Iraq, and further abroad, as the last remaining superpower practises realpolitik on a truly global scale. Quite where this adventure takes us may be unclear at this time; the outcomes remain opaque, but it is almost certain that innocent non-combatants will become enmeshed in a conflagration not of their specific making, and over which they exercise little, if any, control.

            Similarly, the NGO community, apparently the ‘world’s new superpower’ and putative caller for restraint (if not outright proscription) in arms control matters, appears now to have little or no voice in the august corridors of Washington or London. However, the impetus for meaningful change is as relevant and imperative as ever. The seemingly critical issue is that of powers calling for ‘freedom and democracy’ in a new war in which they exercise their own rules of engagement, including the instruments they use to this end.

            As the case studies briefly discussed here illustrate, the dangers of using indiscriminate weapons in pursuit of objectives breaches at the very least the universal notion of morality and a normative polity that seeks civilised (in the non-value sense) management of conflict, the opposite of which should not be hidden behind the hobbling obscurantism of so-called ‘embedded’ journalism. The point is: a farmer cannot practise sustainable agriculture in a field infested with unstable, highly volatile CB and related weaponry; a child cannot play in an area littered with bright yellow canisters for fear of a premature demise; women and children (who usually perform these tasks in many parts of the world) cannot fetch water from a well that is seen as a ‘militarily-efficacious’ target that may be useful to terrorists.

            What is certain at this juncture remains the question of ends and means; whilst morality remains a ‘difficult’ concept when applied to national security, then the defence of ‘freedom’ becomes meaningless when ring-fenced for the benefit of the world’s relatively wealthy minorities. In the final analysis, the types of weapon under discussion display similar, if not exact, properties to APM when live and yet unexploded on impact with the ground. From this perspective, the weapons are of dubious legality. The law, however, as Cicero again would have it, remains conspicuous by its absence in war, and that the exercise of overwhelming force provides the justification for a sledgehammer approach to diplomacy and peacemaking. It is difficult to imagine just how peace can be constructed and maintained when cluster weapons effectively inhibit post-conflict development, and the institution of a viable civil society amidst the ruins of a dismembered and cluster-bomb infested country. 

However, with the Dublin Accords of 2007, the issue of cluster bomb/sub-munitions proscription seems to be settled. But, as is the case with APMs, there are still a number of countries that refuse, for ‘strategic’ reasons, to inclusively join the majority of countries that want to ban these weapons. This list of non-participants includes Israel, that is currently engaged in military operations in the crowded enclave of Gaza, and which has littered Lebanon with hundreds of thousands of sub-munitions, and which are killing civilians to this day. Moreover as the situation with landmines shows, having a ban does not equal enforcement; Angola, a signatory state to the Ottawa Treaty, returned to laying landmines during an upsurge in civil conflict due to ‘operational necessity’; so, in the final analysis, much depends on the political will of the international community to not only bring about a ban on indiscriminate weapons platforms, but to ensure absolute and enduring compliance.

Most argue that “A landmine blast causes injuries like blindness, burns, destroyed limbs and shrapnel wounds,” and are against the creation of these destructive weapons. To be against this would be completely optimistic, but mines never stopped any unit from taking its objective. They never prevented the enemy from getting too close to one. They are not essential in a mission but they are usually within budgets.

“Landmines deprive people in some of the poorest countries of land and infrastructure,” says International Campaign to Ban Landmines. They claim that the solution would involve ensuring that all countries will join the Mine Ban Treaty and undertake to never again produce, use or sell antipersonnel mines. Of course persuading non state actors to ban landmines to abide by the spirit of the treaty might promote this campaign. 

Landmines do get the job done, but cannot be aimed. This causes them to do bad to unwary and innocent bystanders. Mines do undesirable damage to livestock and even livelihoods. Joining the Mine Ban Treaty for every country would be unbelievably impressive to the world.  The banning of landmines would ameliorate the world greatly.

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During the 1940s, Hooker Chemical and Plastics Corporation used Love Canal, a sparsely populated area located in Niagara Falls New York, as a chemical dump site lining it with impermeable concrete. However, residential and school constructions in the 1950s resulted in many breaches of the protective lining, gradually seeping out toxic wastes into the soil polluting the groundwater and the air. Of the 240 buried chemicals that had been identified, eleven were suspected carcinogens, notably benzene, which can cause serious health problems. According to a report, the residents were stricken with a disturbingly high rate of miscarriages, birth defects, nervous disorders and cancers. Love Canal has become a testimony to one of the greatest human blunders and of the constant need for seeking environmentally safe ways of managing toxic waste.

Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

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In 1986, one of the reactors of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine exploded due to an experiment gone horribly wrong, reactor design defects and total disregard of safety measures. Considered to be the worst ever nuclear power accident, the explosion spewed out large amounts of radioactive particles that spread over parts of western former Soviet Union, Europe, and eastern North America. It caused major economic losses and raised serious environmental concerns that include the long-term effects of radiation exposure not only on people’s health but also on the region’s agriculture, food consumption, aquatic systems, and flora and fauna. Birth deformities and respiratory-related deaths among the very young and the elderly have been estimated to be in the tens of thousands and are believed to be attributable to this particular event.

Bhopal Disaster

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A dangerous chemical reaction occurred when water leaked into a storage tank of Union Carbide resulting in an explosion that released around 43 tons of methyl isocyanate, a highly toxic gas, contaminating the air and water of the city of Bhopal in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh in 1984. Primary causes of what can be regarded as one of the worst industrial environmental disasters on record included safety rules leniency and lack of equipment maintenance due to cost cutting measures. Around 20,000 have died due to exposure in the next 20 years since the tragedy; and still more than 100,000 are being poisoned and suffering from debilitating diseases today due to inadequate cleanup.

Prestige Oil Spill

Image sourcePrestige was the name of a Greek-ran single-hulled oil tanker that did not live up to its name. In 2002, the tanker’s seaworthiness was so severely compromised by bad weather that the captain sought to dock at nearby harbors. But the Spanish, French and Portuguese government refused to allow its entry into their ports for fear of contamination of their coastlines. The ship eventually split in two and sank off the Galician coast gradually spilling 74,000 tons of heavy fuel oil into the sea. More than half of the 1,000 beaches along Spanish and French Atlantic coast were affected; about 100,000 birds died particularly the Guillemot, Razorbill and Puffin; and coral reefs, many species of sharks and other marine life are still slowly being poisoned. The spill is the largest environmental disaster in the history of Europe.

Baia Mare Cyanide Disaster

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Gold cyanidation is a very common metallurgical process that uses cyanide, a highly poisonous substance, for extracting gold from mineral ores. This highly controversial method enables miners to remove the last remnants of gold and silver from discarded mine tailings. In 2000, a rupture from a defective tailings dam of a gold mining operation of the Australian-Romanian joint venture AURUL in Baia Mare Romania sent tons of heavy metal wastes and around 120,000 cubic meters of water saturated with cyanide into the Somes, Tisza and Danube rivers resulting in massive devastation of aquatic life, especially in neighboring Hungary and Serbia. Thanks to speedy response of the Romanian authorities, no casualties were reported except for a few children who were hospitalized for eating fishes from affected rivers. Shortly after the accident, cyanide levels were found to be 700 times and 300 times above pollution standards in nearby river water and in Hungary, respectively. Copper and zinc concentrations exceeded the pollution threshold many times as well.

Southern Leyte Mudslide

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In February 2006, a deadly rockslide-debris avalanche befell my fellow Filipino compatriots in Southern Leyte province of the Philippines following more than a week long heavy rains and a minor earthquake measuring 2.6 on the Richter scale causing widespread destruction and loss of life. Loose rock and soil debris buried the mountain village of Guinsaugon in the town of Saint Bernard including an entire elementary school of around 250 students in session. Around 200 had been confirmed dead but more than 1,500 are still missing to this day. Deforestation of the area by illegal loggers and extensive mining in the area three decades earlier had taken its toll, and together with the heavy rains and earthquake created the perfect combination for such a disaster to happen. Indeed, this was a very disturbing result of irresponsible exploitation of the earth’s natural resources.

Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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War positively has damaging effects on our environment. Whether the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and Nagasaki three days later are justified or not is still very much debated today. But one thing for sure, it led to the surrender of the once militaristic nation of Japan, officially ending World War II. It was estimated that around 140,000 and 70,000 died from radiation poisoning and burns in Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively in 1945 alone. Who knows how many thousand more have died from injuries and sickness attributable to radiation exposure released by the bombs in the succeeding decades.

Agent Orange

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Between 1961 and 1971, during the Vietnam Conflict, the United States military under its Herbicidal Warfare Program sprayed more than 10 million gallons of Agent Orange, a potent defoliant and herbicide containing dioxin, over large areas of South Vietnam to destroy forests and crops that provided cover for Viet Cong guerrillas. Dioxin exposure, whether directly or indirectly through ingestion of food grown on affected soil, has been linked to a variety of cancers, blood and nerve disorders. Increased occurrence of birth defects, infant death, mental retardation and childhood cancers in the area have been noted. This herbicide is still causing indescribable sufferings to war veterans and civilians more than 3 decades after the conclusion of Vietnam War.

Landmines

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Landmines are devices designed to explode in the presence or contact of any moving object. There are around 100 million of these explosive devices entrenched into the ground during conflicts all over the world, particularly in Southeast Asia, South America and Africa. They are not only murderers and maimers of innocent civilians long after conflicts have ceased; they have also contributed to the destruction of wildlife, resulting in disruption to a region’s ecological balance. Due to fear, arable lands are left untilled, depriving people of livelihood. In time, their corrosion and possible leakage of heavy metals and toxic substances will pollute rivers and degrade soil.

Global Warming

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Global Warming is one issue that has raised much concern today. There is no longer any question about who’s to blame for our current predicament. There is mounting evidence that human carelessness toward nature have resulted in the increase of the Earth’s average temperature due to steadily rising concentration of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, since the Industrial Revolution took effect in the late eighteenth century. Not only that, global warming has dreadful consequences, which have become more apparent in recent years; they include rapidly melting polar ice caps that cause sea levels to rise; increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events (floods, droughts, super typhoons, etc); mass specie extinctions; and widespread epidemics, among others. Although not all these events can be directly traced to global warming, but many scientists are convinced that they will become more frequent, should the world’s temperature continue to increase.

More history articles:

• Mighty Women
• Warrior Women
• Man-made Environmental Disasters
• Rocks and Stones with Historical, Cultural and Religious Significance
• Famous Teen Deaths
• Birthday Deaths
• Famous Holocaust Survivors
• Heroes of the Holocaust & Their Stories of Courage 1
• Heroes of the Holocaust & Their Stories of Courage 2
• 10 Bizarre Deaths in History
• 10 (More) Bizarre Deaths in History
• 10 (Ultimate) Bizarre Deaths in History