Commitment to the Convention on Cluster Munitions

Policy

The Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville) signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008.

In June 2011, a Congolese official informed the CMC that a bill authorizing the ratification of the convention was sent to the Supreme Court for an advisory opinion in August 2010. After receiving a positive opinion, the bill was sent in March 2011 for consideration at the executive level by Council. After this, the bill will be sent to Parliament for review and adoption, which could occur in 2011.[1]

After ratification is completed, Congo intends to enact national implementation legislation for the Convention on Cluster Munitions separate from its implementation legislation for the Mine Ban Treaty.[2]

Congo attended several meetings of the Oslo Process that created the convention, and joined in the consensus adoption of the convention in Dublin in May 2008.[3] Since 2008, Congo has shown strong interest in the convention. It participated in the convention’s First Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Vientiane, Lao PDR in November 2010, where it made a statement on its destruction of stockpiled cluster munitions and requested assistance to identify existing munitions and receive training in stockpile destruction.[4] Congo attended intersessional meetings of the convention in Geneva in June 2011. It also participated in a UN Special Event on the convention held during the UN General Assembly First Committee on Disarmament and International Security in New York on 19 October 2010.

The Congolese Campaign to Ban Landmines (CCIM) has undertaken activities in Kinshasa to promote the convention in both Congo-Brazzaville and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, including a workshop (28 May) and a roundtable (30 October).[5]

Congo is party to the Mine Ban Treaty, but is not party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Congo is not believed to have used, produced, or transferred cluster munitions.

Congo has reported having stockpiles of Soviet cluster munitions that were supplied for use with MIG-21 fighter aircraft, but had not provided detailed information on the types or quantities of these munitions.

In July 2010, a Ministry of Defense official said that weapons depots containing cluster munitions were destroyed during the country’s 1997–1998 civil war, and stocks were also destroyed in the year 2000 as part of a project to collect and destroy damaged weapons and ammunition stockpiles.[6]

Cluster munitions were also apparently part of weapons stockpiles destroyed in 2008–2010 with the assistance of United Kingdom-based humanitarian demining organization Mines Advisory Group (MAG).[7] At the First Meeting of States Parties in November 2010, Congo stated that about 200 cluster munition projectiles had been destroyed in the project since 2008 through a project funded by the European Union, managed by the International Organization for Migration, and implemented by MAG.[8]

In March 2011, a military official informed the Monitor that there were no cluster munitions stockpiled in the Republic of Congo and no new stockpiles had been discovered.[9]

Cluster munition remnants

The explosive threat in Congo has included cluster munition remnants,[10] but the extent of any residual contamination is not known.[11] Between December 2007 and May 2008, MAG destroyed 18 cluster munitions containing submunitions during stockpile destruction activities.[12] In July 2010, the Ministry of National Defense informed the Monitor that some of its stockpiles of Russian cluster munitions exploded during the 1997–1998 civil conflict. In addition, a member of the armed forces was killed in 2009 after he detonated a submunition at an ammunition storage area in Maya-Maya.[13] In February 2011, MAG reestablished its program in Congo and was preparing to clear the Maya-Maya site of unexploded ordnance and ammunition.[14]