Namibia

Last Updated: 19 August 2011

Cluster Munition Ban Policy

The Republic of Namibia signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008.

As of June 2011, no information was available on the status of ratification. Previously, in June 2010, a Namibian official told the CMC that the government had approved ratification and aimed to complete ratification by the First Meeting of States Parties in November 2010.[1]

Namibia participated in two Africa regional meetings held during the Oslo Process that produced the convention.[2] Namibia has continued to engage in the work of the convention. It attended the First Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Vientiane, Lao PDR in November 2010, but did not make any statements. Namibia did not attend the convention’s intersessional meetings in Geneva in June 2011.

 

Namibia is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It has not joined the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

 

Namibia has stated that it does not stockpile cluster munitions.[3] It is not known to have used, produced, imported, or exported them. It is, however, reported to possess Grad 122mm surface-to-surface rockets, but it is not known if these include versions with submunition payloads.[4]

 



[1] CMC meeting with Namibia delegate, International Conference on the Convention on Cluster Munitions, Santiago, 7–9 June 2010. Notes by the CMC.

[2] For detail on Namibia’s policy and practice regarding cluster munitions through early 2009, see Human Rights Watch and Landmine Action, Banning Cluster Munitions: Government Policy and Practice (Ottawa: Mines Action Canada, May 2009), p. 123.

[3] Statement of Namibia, Kampala Conference on the Convention on Cluster Munitions, 30 September 2008. Notes by the CMC.

[4] International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2011 (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 434.