Commitment to the Convention on Cluster Munitions

Policy

The Republic of Lithuania signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008 and ratified on 24March 2011. The convention will enter into force for Lithuania on 1 September 2011.

On 16 December 2010, Lithuania’s Parliament approved the Law on the Ratification on the Convention on Cluster Munitions, No. XI-1239, which was published in the Official Gazette No. 157-7973 on 31 December 2010.[1] Lithuania’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Dalius Čekuolis, deposited the instrument of ratification at the UN in New York on 24March 2011. Lithuania became the 55^th State Party to the convention and the 14^th NATO member to ratify.

On 30 March 2011, Lithuania submitted a voluntary Convention on Cluster Munitions Article 7 report, for calendar year 2010.[2]  According to the report, Article 2 of the ratification law declares that Lithuania will provisionally apply the convention’s prohibitions pending its entry into force for Lithuania and requires that an authority be designated to ensure implementation of the convention. The report also lists articles of Lithuania’s Criminal Code of 26 September 2000 that apply to the convention.[3]

In May 2011, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official informed the Monitor that according to Lithuania’s legal system international treaties are applied directly and a specific implementation law for the convention is not needed.[4] 

Lithuania actively participated in the Oslo Process that created the convention.[5] It has continued to engage in the work of the convention.  Lithuania attended an international conference on the destruction of cluster munitions in Berlin in June 2009. It did not attend the First Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Vientiane, Lao PDR in November 2010, but participated in the first intersessional meetings in Geneva in June 2011.

Interpretive issues

Lithuania has not expressed its views on some important interpretive matters in relation to the convention’s provisions on transit through, and foreign stockpiling of cluster munitions on, the national territory of States Parties; assistance with prohibited acts; and investment in production. During the Oslo Process, Lithuania was vocal in calling for provisions on interoperability (joint military operations with states not party).[6] In May 2011, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official informed the Monitor that Lithuania’s views on the interpretative issues were being discussed internally and said it hoped to express more concrete positions at the Second Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Beirut, Lebanon in September 2011.[7]

Lithuania is State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty.

Convention on Conventional Weapons

Lithuania is a party to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) and its Protocol V on explosive remnants of war. Lithuania continued to actively engage in CCW deliberations  on cluster munitions in 2010 and the first half of 2011.

Lithuania has emphasized that CCW work on cluster munitions should not be based on a premise that any agreement is better than no agreement and has noted that many states involved in the CCW process have a legal obligation to discourage the use of cluster munitions under the Convention on Cluster Munitions.[8]

At the CCW Meeting of States Parties in November 2010, Lithuania announced it was in the final stages of ratifying the Convention on Cluster Munitions and looked forward to becoming a States Party. Lithuania, however, said that a CCW instrument that included major users and producers of cluster munitions was necessary. It said the chair’s draft text was a “good basis” for CCW in 2001, but urged a strong mandate to conclude an agreement by the CCW’s Fourth Review Conference in November 2011.[9]

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Lithuania has stated that it “does not possess cluster munitions and has never produced, used, stockpiled or transferred such weapons in the past.”[10] This is confirmed in the voluntary Convention on Cluster Munitions Article 7 report.