The hardest thing was to explain to the children what had happened to their father. At that moment, I didn’t even know what the consequences of my husband’s injuries would be. I don’t know what was more difficult: To watch my husband’s torments, caused by these grave injuries, or my children growing up before their time. He was in the hospital when the children started a new school year. In addition to all the suffering and the pain, there were also financial troubles and uncertainty. Every visit to the hospital was painful, for me, for the children, and for their father. Instead of playing with other children, they were travelling all the time with me to the hospital to visit their father. At the hospital they had the opportunity to meet people, some of them barely younger than they, who also had been maimed by cluster bombs. They experienced prejudice and intolerance at school for years because of their father’s disability. I often ask myself the question, and now I am asking you, too: Who is the cluster bomb victim? Is it just the one innocent person, the victim him or herself, who is certainly suffering the most, or are we, the ones close to that person, also suffering too? The actual number of cluster munitions victims is much larger than what statistics show. Whole families, whole communities are affected by them. It is my opinion - and I am convinced that all women and all mothers would share this opinion - that it is high time to stop the killing and maiming of our children and husbands. It is high time to stop making victims out of our families.