Commitment to the Convention on Cluster Munitions

Policy

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

In May 2013, a government representative informed the CMC that the ratification was sent to the National Assembly for approval, but referred to the Ministry of Defence for further consideration.[1] Previously, in May 2012, Angola informed a regional conference on the convention that its ratification would “be done soon.”[2] In 2011, Angolan officials indicated that the ratification package was being prepared for submission to the Council of Ministers for consideration and then to the National Assembly for approval.[3]

Angola participated extensively in the Oslo Process and, while it did not attend the formal negotiations in Dublin in May 2008, it signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Oslo in December 2008.[4]

Angola has continued to participate in the work of the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It attended the convention’s Third Meeting of States Parties in Oslo, Norway in September 2012, intersessional meetings of the convention in April 2013, and a regional conference on universalization of the convention held in Lomé, Togo in May 2013.

Angola did not make statements at any of these meetings, but at the regional meeting in May 2013 it endorsed the Lomé Strategy on the Universalization of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which commits governments to undertake specific and concerted actions to ensure that all African countries that have not yet ratified or acceded to the convention to do so at the earliest opportunity. The Lomé Strategy also expresses “grave concern over the recent and on-going use of cluster munitions” and calls for the immediate end to the use of these weapons.[5]

Angola is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is not party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Production, transfer, and use

Angola is not known to have produced or exported cluster munitions.

Cluster munitions were used in the past in Angola, but it is unclear when or by whom. An Intersectoral Commission on Demining and Humanitarian Assistance (Comissão Nacional Intersectorial de Desminagem e Assistência Humanitária, CNIDAH) official who had seen cluster munitions remnants in Huambo province near Caala and Bailundo, probably from the heavy fighting during 1998–1999, said he believed that the Angolan Armed Forces used cluster munitions because only they used aircraft during this conflict, not the rebel UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) forces.[6]

Stockpiling and destruction

The government has not made an official determination and public announcement that all stocks have been identified and destroyed.

In June 2010, a CNIDAH official said that Angola had destroyed its stockpile of cluster munitions between 2003 and 2010 in a joint initiative of the government and HALO Trust, and that the armed forces no longer held any stocks.[7] In addition, HALO’s weapons and ammunition disposal teams, which operate in all 18 provinces destroying weapons caches belonging to the police, army, navy, and air force, found and destroyed 51 abandoned explosive submunitions in military warehouses.[8] The location of these warehouses has not been reported.

In the past, Jane’s Information Group noted that KMGU dispensers that deploy submunitions were in service for Angolan aircraft.[9] Deminers operating in Angola have documented the presence of casings of RBK 250-275 cluster bombs among abandoned ammunition.[10] It is likely the KMGU and RBK were of Soviet origin.

Angola is also reported to possess BM-21 Grad and RM-70 122mm surface-to-surface rocket launchers, but it is not known if these include ammunition with submunition payloads.[11]