Policy

The Gambia signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 4 December 1997. While it completed domestic ratification of the treaty on 2 November 1999, the instrument of ratification was not deposited until 23 September 2002. It became a State Party on 1 March 2003. In 2002, the Gambia reported its intent to incorporate the Mine Ban Treaty into its domestic laws, but no progress on national implementation legislation has since been reported, including in Gambia’s Mine Ban Treaty Article 7 reports submitted in 2009 and 2010.[1]

Gambia attended the Tenth Meeting of States Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty in Geneva in November–December 2010, as well as the intersessional Standing Committee meetings in June 2011.

Gambia has submitted two Article 7 reports since it became a State Party, one in 2009 and another in 2010. As of October 2011, the Gambia had not submitted its annual Article 7 report.

Gambia is not party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Production, transfer, stockpiling, and retention

Prior to ratifying the Mine Ban Treaty, Gambia submitted a voluntary report on 28 August 2002, in which it declared that it has never possessed antipersonnel mines.[2] Gambia’s 2010 Article 7 report states that the Gambia “never have [sic] a production facility.”[3]

In a statement at the Tenth Meeting of States Parties in November–December 2010, Gambia declared that in October 2010 its armed forces seized three antipersonnel mines from members of the Movement of Democratic Forces in the Casamance (MFDC) who had crossed into Gambia and were intercepted by Gambian forces.[4]

In its Article 7 report submitted in 2010, Gambia declared that it retains 100 VS-50 antipersonnel mines, with “fuses separated,” for “instructional and mine awareness training purposes.”[5] This number remains unchanged from the number of mines retained for training reported in 2009. However, in its 2009 Article 7 report, the Gambia reported that its mines retained for training were used for “combat and mine awareness training,” whereas the 2010 report does not contain a reference to combat training.[6]

Commitment to the Convention on Cluster Munitions

Policy

The Gambia signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008.

In May 2012, a government representative informed a regional conference that the Gambia hopes to ratify the convention by the Third Meeting of States Parties in September 2012 and said the delay was “largely due to, among other factors the lack of consistency of delegation and the necessary information required to convince the political leadership to ratify.”[1] In September 2011, the Gambia also stated that it hoped to complete ratification soon, but did not provide any information on the status of the process.[2] Previously, in November 2010, a government representative said that the Gambia’s ratification of the convention had “gone far” despite “technical challenges” and hoped it would be completed “soon.”[3]

The Gambia participated in two meetings of the Oslo Process and, while it did not attend the formal negotiations in Dublin in May 2008, the Gambia signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Oslo in December 2008.[4]

The Gambia has continued to engage in the work of the convention. The Gambia attended the convention’s First Meeting of States Parties in Vientiane, Lao PDR in November 2010 and the Second Meeting of States Parties in Beirut, Lebanon, in September 2011.

The Gambia attended the Accra Regional Conference on the Universalization of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in May 2012, where it made a statement on ratification and endorsed the Accra Universalization Action Plan issued by the conference, which among other actions, encourages states not party to the convention to take all necessary steps to ratify by the convention’s Third Meeting of States Parties in September 2012.

The Gambia did not attend the convention’s intersessional meetings in Geneva in June 2011 or April 2012.

The Gambia is a party to the Mine Ban Treaty.

The Gambia is not a party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW). 

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Gambia has stated on several occasions that it has never used, produced, or stockpiled cluster munitions.[5]