Policy

The Republic of Azerbaijan has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Government officials have stated that Azerbaijan will not join the convention until the conflict with Armenia is settled, including the status of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan last commented on the matter in August 2010, when a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said there is support for the convention, but that Azerbaijan cannot join “at this stage” because of the “ongoing occupation” of Nagorno-Karabakh and “seven areas adjoining regions” of Azerbaijan by Armenia.[1]

Azerbaijan participated in some of the Oslo Process meetings that led to the creation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, but did not attend the formal negotiations in Dublin in May 2008.[2] It has not attended any meetings of the ban convention, such as the Fourth Meeting of States Parties in Lusaka in September 2013 or intersessional meetings held in Geneva.

Azerbaijan has 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.”[3]

Azerbaijan is not party to the Mine Ban Treaty or the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Azerbaijan is not known to have produced or exported cluster munitions, but it inherited a stockpile of cluster munitions from the Soviet Union. Jane’s Information Group has reported that RBK-250, RBK-250-275, and RBK-500 cluster bombs are in service with the country’s air force.[4] RBK-250 bombs with PTAB submunitions were observed among the abandoned Soviet-era ammunition stockpiles located near the village of Saloğlu in the northwestern part of the country.[5]

Azerbaijan also possesses Grad 122mm and Smerch 300mm surface-to-surface rockets, but it is not known if these include versions with submunition payloads.[6] Azerbaijan received an additional 12 Smerch 300mm unguided surface-to-surface launchers from the Ukraine in 2007–2008.[7]

Azerbaijan received a total of 50 Extra surface-to-surface missiles from Israel for its Lynx-type launchers in 2008–2009; it had ordered them in 2005.[8] According to the product information sheet available from its manufacturer, the Extra missile can have either a unitary or submunition warhead.[9] It is not know which variant was acquired.