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Azerbaijan
Cluster Munition Ban Policy
The Republic of Azerbaijan has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
Government officials have been more open to discussing the convention in recent years, but have stated that Azerbaijan will not join the convention until the conflict with Armenia is settled, including the status of Nagorno-Karabakh.
For example, in 2010, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said that the government supports the Convention on Cluster Munitions, but 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 regional or international meetings held on cluster munitions since 2008.
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. It inherited a stockpile of cluster munitions from the Soviet Union. Jane’s Information Group reports that RBK-250, RBK-250/275, and RBK-500 cluster bombs are in service with the country’s air force.[3] Additionally, Azerbaijan received 12 Smerch 300mm unguided surface-to-surface launchers from the Ukraine in 2007-2008, but it is not known if these include rockets with submunition payloads.[4]
Azerbaijan ordered from Israel in 2005 and received in 2008-2009 a total of 50 Extra surface-to-surface missiles for its Lynx type launchers.[5] According to the product information sheet available from its manufacturer, the Extra missile can have either a unitary or submunition warhead.[6] It is not know which variant was acquired.
RBK-250 bombs with PTAB submunitions were among the abandoned Soviet-era ammunition stockpiles located near the village of Saloglu in the northwestern part of the country.[7] Azerbaijan also possesses Grad 122mm and Smerch 300mm surface-to-surface rockets, but it is not known if these include versions with submunition payloads.[8]
[1] Statement by Elchin Huseynli, Arms Control Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Baku, 2 August 2010. The AzCBL organized this roundtable meeting on the mine and cluster munitions problem in Azerbaijan and globally; “Azerbaijan not join [sic] the UN Convention on the prohibition of cluster munitions,” Zerkalo (newspaper), www.zerkalo.az, 3 August 2010; and letter No. 115/10/L from Amb. Murad N. Najafbayli, Permanent Mission of the Republic of Azerbaijan to the UN in Geneva, to the CMC, 10 May 2010.
[2] For details on Azerbaijan’s cluster munition policy and practice through early 2009, see Human Rights Watch and Landmine Action, Banning Cluster Munitions: Government Policy and Practice (Ottawa: Mines Action Canada, May 2009), p. 188.
[3] Robert Hewson, ed., Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons, Issue 44 (Surrey, UK: Jane’s Information Group Limited, 2004), p. 835.
[4] Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, “Arms Transfers Database,” http://www.sipri.org/databases/armstransfers. Recipient report for Azerbaijan for the period 1950-2011, generated on 15 May 2012.
[5] Ibid. According to SIPRI, the Azerbaijani designation for the Lynx multiple rocket launchers are Dolu-1, Leysan and Shimsek.
[6] Israel Military Industries, “Product Information Sheet: Extra Extended Range Artillery,” p. 3, http://bit.ly/ILhxUl accessed 4 May 2012.
[7] Human Rights Watch visit to Saloglu, May 2005.
[8] International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2011 (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 88; and Colin King, ed., Jane’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal 2007–2008, CD-edition, 15 January 2008 (Surrey, UK: Jane’s Information Group Limited, 2008).
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