Chad

Last Updated: 12 August 2014

Cluster Munition Ban Policy

Policy

The Republic of Chad signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008, ratified on 26 March 2013, and the convention entered into force for the country on 1 September 2013.

Chad is believed to be considering the enactment of national legislation to enforce the convention’s provisions.[1] Ratification of the Convention on Cluster Munitions was approved by Chad’s parliament on 29 March 2012.[2]

As of 27 June 2014, Chad had not yet submitted its initial Article 7 report for the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which was due by 28 February 2014.

Chad actively participated in the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions and supported a comprehensive ban on cluster munitions.[3]

Chad has continued to engage in the work of the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It has participated in every Meeting of States Parties, except for the Fourth Meeting of States Parties in Lusaka, Zambia in September 2013. Chad has attended all of the convention’s intersessional meetings in Geneva, including those held in April 2014. It also participated in a regional meeting on the convention in Lomé, Togo in May 2013.

Chad endorsed the regional meeting’s Lomé Strategy on the Universalization of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which 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.[4] Chad also voted in favor of a UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution on 15 May 2013 that strongly condemned “the use by the Syrian authorities of...cluster munitions.”[5] Chad, as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, 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.”[6]

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

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Chad is not known to have used, produced, transferred, or stockpiled cluster munitions.

French aircraft dropped cluster munitions on a Libyan airfield inside Chad at Wadi Doum during the 1986–1987 conflict. Libyan forces used AO-1SCh and PTAB-2.5 submunitions.

In September 2012, Chad stated that the extent to which its territory is contaminated by cluster munition remnants is not precisely known, but it was evident the weapons had been used in the Fada region and there is a strong likelihood that they were used in other parts of the north. Chad said that the Tibesti region in the northwest was being surveyed to determine the extent of the contamination.[7]

In April 2012, a Chadian official—in response to questions about Libyan arms stockpiles that were left unsecured during the 2011 Libyan conflict—informed the Monitor that there have been no transfers of cluster munitions from Libya to Chad.[8]

 



[1] CMC meeting with Gen. Abdel Aziz Izzo, Director, National Demining Center (Centre National de Déminage, CND), and Moussa Ali Soultani, Strategic Plan and Operations Advisor, CND, in Geneva, 16 April 2013. The ICRC is providing assistance to Chad with respect to national implementation measures. Statement of ICRC, Lomé Regional Seminar on the Universalization of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, Lomé, Togo, 23 May 2013. Notes by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).

[2] Statement of Chad, Convention on Cluster Munitions Intersessional Meetings, Geneva, 16 April 2013; and CMC meeting with Saleh Hissein Hassan, CND, in Geneva, 18 April 2012.

[3] For details on Chad’s cluster munition policy and practice up to early 2009, see Human Rights Watch and Landmine Action, Banning Cluster Munitions: Government Policy and Practice (Ottawa: Mines Action Canada, May 2009), pp. 55–56.

[4]Lomé Strategy on the Universalization of the Convention on Cluster Munitions,” Lomé Regional Seminar on the Universalization of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, Lomé, Togo, 23 May 2013.

[5]The situation in the Syrian Arab Republic,” UNGA Resolution A/67/L.63, 15 May 2013.

[7] Statement of Chad, Convention on Cluster Munitions Third Meeting of States Parties, Oslo, 13 September 2012.

[8] According to the official, Chad deployed two explosive ordnance disposal teams and an army regiment to ensure that no weapons crossed the border from Libya with refugees entering Chad. CMC meeting with Saleh Hissein Hassan, CND, in Geneva, 18 April 2012.