Shop

This series of stories examined the political and human cost of Canada's controversial approach towards ratifying the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It detailed how Canada had aligned itself with the United States, which has opted out of the CCM, and it explored the lethal legacy of U.S. cluster bomb use that is still being felt in Laos, four decades after the end of the of Vietnam War. This series broke news in the corridors of the United Nations in Geneva, including a rare on-the-record interview with a senior official with the scrupulously neutral International Committee of the Red Cross criticizing Canada's position on the issue. These stories also reflected unprecedented access to the closed communist government of Laos, interviewing top officials who had never before talked to a Western journalist. This series gave voice to impoverished Laotian villagers who are threatened by these unexploded munitions, and they explained the larger economic and social implication of this lethal legacy of the long-ended Vietnam War. It also showed the U.S. influence over one of its closest allies in how it approached an important piece of foreign policy.