The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 4 December 1997 and ratified it on 14 June 1999, becoming a State Party on 1 December 1999. Luxembourg has not produced or exported antipersonnel mines, but previously imported mines. Export of antipersonnel mines was banned in April 1997. Legislation to enforce the antipersonnel mine prohibition domestically entered into force in December 1999. Luxembourg submitted its 13^th Mine Ban Treaty Article 7 report on 30 April 2012.

Luxembourg finished destruction of its stockpile of 9,600 antipersonnel mines in August 1997. It initially retained 988 mines for training purposes, reducing this number to 599 by 1 January 2011.[1] In May 2011, Luxembourg destroyed all these mines, and currently does not retain any for training.[2]

Luxembourg attended the Eleventh Meeting of States Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty in November-December 2011 in Phnom Penh, where it delivered a statement during the General Exchange of Views.[3] Luxembourg did not attend the intersessional Standing Committee meetings for the treaty in 2011 or 2012. Luxembourg is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons and its Amended Protocol II on landmines and Protocol V on explosive remnants of war.

Policy

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008 and ratified on 10 July 2009. It was among the first 30 ratifications that triggered entry into force of the convention on 1 August 2010.

Luxembourg’s 2009 ratification law also serves as its national implementation legislation and includes a comprehensive prohibition on cluster munitions as well as penal sanctions for violations.[1]

Luxembourg submitted its initial Article 7 transparency report for the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 30 March 2011 and provided annual updated reports in 2012, 2013, and on 14 April 2014.[2]

Luxembourg participated in the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions and was one of a small number of states that began national legislative initiatives on cluster munitions before the Oslo Process was launched.[3]

Since 2008, Luxembourg has continued its strong support for the Convention on Cluster Munitions.  It participated in the convention’s Meetings of States Parties held in 2011, 2012, and the Fourth Meeting of States Parties in Lusaka, Zambia in September 2013. Lithuania has attended all of the convention’s intersessional meetings in Geneva, including in April 2014.

Luxembourg has continued to actively promote the universalization of the Convention on Cluster Munitions through public declarations and bilateral contacts.[4] At the Fourth Meeting of States Parties, Luxembourg pledged to continue to work for the convention’s universalization and emphasized its support for civil society, which it described as “the driving force in the process of developing and establishing the convention and now plays an important role in its implementation.”[5]

In a May 2014 letter to Handicap International (HI) Luxembourg, a senior Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs official said Luxembourg has raised the issue of the convention’s universalization bilaterally with several states not party in 2012, 2013, and in the first few months of 2014.[6] According to the letter, as part of its role in 2014 as chair of the Security Council’s Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict, Luxembourg has made efforts to promote the inclusion of cluster munitions, landmines, and explosive remnants of war and their impact on children in the group’s reports.[7]

Since April 2013, Luxembourg has made several statements condemning the Syria government’s use of cluster munitions.[8] Luxembourg has also voted in favor of recent UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions condemning the Syrian government’s cluster munition use, including Resolution 68/182 on 18 December 2013, which expressed “outrage” at Syria’s “continued widespread and systematic gross violations of human rights…including those involving the use of…cluster munitions.”[9]

As a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, Luxembourg endorsed Security Council Resolution 2155 on 27 May 2014, which expressed concern at the use of cluster munitions in South Sudan and called for “all parties to refrain from similar such use in the future.”[10]

Interpretive Issues

Luxembourg has expressed its views on a number of issues important for the interpretation and implementation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Concerning the issue of the prohibition on assistance during joint military operations with non-signatories, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has described Article 21 on relations with states not party as “an important clause to allow continued collaboration with countries that are not yet ready to relinquish the possession of cluster munitions, but also to convince them to join the many countries which have decided to abandon this class of weapons.”[11]

In 2011 and 2012, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the text of Article 1 of the convention enumerates the prohibitions on cluster munitions, including stockpiling, but “does not make a reference to transit.”[12]

In September 2011, Wikileaks released a United States (US) diplomatic cable detailing a 12 December 2007 meeting with Luxembourg officials to discuss implementation of the outcome of the Oslo Process (the Convention on Cluster Munitions). According to the cable, Luxembourg “will not allow” for the convention “to hinder the transshipment of CM [cluster munitions] through Findel International Airport” or “CM related procurement services at the Luxembourg-based NATO Maintenance and Supply Agency (NAMSA).”[13] After the cable was made public, parliamentary questions were put to the government requesting clarification of Luxembourg’s position on cluster munitions, including on foreign stockpiling and transit of US cluster munitions.[14] The Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Justice responded with a joint statement on 5 September 2011 expressing Luxembourg’s “full compliance” with its obligations under NATO and the Convention on Cluster Munitions and stating that there is “no information or evidence to believe that the airport of Luxembourg or its infrastructure capacity can be or has been used in the context of NATO, or any other capacity, for a purpose prohibited by the Convention on Cluster Munitions.”[15]

Disinvestment

Luxembourg’s 2009 ratification law prohibits investment in cluster munitions, making it one of the convention’s leaders on disinvestment.[16] In 2010, the Ministry of Finance acknowledged the need to address the law’s use of the term “knowingly” with respect to financial investment and to develop a list of producers of cluster munitions.[17] The government said that the Social Security Compensation Fund would establish a blacklist of companies active in the field of manufacturing cluster munitions that would permit their exclusion from the fund. It also said that, in cooperation with the president of the fund, a process would begin to dispose of the shares in the companies.[18]

In 2011, the Social Security Compensation Fund published its first exclusion list on cluster munitions, identifying more than a dozen companies in the aerospace and defense sector.[19] Taking effect immediately, the fund’s administrative council ordered fund managers to sell all assets held in any of the companies identified. The list was to be reviewed twice a year.[20]

In 2012, the fund presented its new policy on socially responsible investments and list of excluded companies to the Parliament Committee of Health and Social Affairs.[21] In 2013, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that all incriminated assets from the fund had been sold and declared that it would control the compliance of other government investments with the 2009 law prohibiting investment in cluster munitions.[22]

In 2010, Luxembourg proposed the creation of an ethics council to check and verify its current and future public investments in order to prevent any improper investments in companies involved in the production of cluster munitions.[23] As of May 2014, there has been no further development on the creation of the proposed council.[24]

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Luxembourg has repeatedly called on other States Parties and signatories to prohibit financing in cluster munitions, including at meetings of States Parties and in bilateral contacts with many parties to the convention.[25] In September 2013, Luxembourg expressed its hope that other nations will follow its example and join in the disinvestment initiative.[26]

Luxembourg is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is also party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Luxembourg is not known to have ever used or transferred cluster munitions. In its Article 7 reports, Luxembourg has declared that it does not stockpile cluster munitions, including for training purposes. Its response of “not applicable” to the section on the conversion of production facilities indicates that Luxembourg does not have any cluster munition production facilities.[27]

In 2012, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg contributed €909,279 (US$1,169,242)[1] to four mine action programs through the UN Voluntary Trust Fund. The two largest contributions went to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Myanmar/Burma (€284,878/$366,325), which accounted for 63% of Luxembourg’s funding.

Contributions by recipient: 2012[2]

Though Luxembourg reduced its 2012 contribution by 46%, it still amounted to the average amount for the 2008–2012 period.

Summary of contributions: 2008–2012[3]

N/A = not applicable