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Algeria
Cluster Munition Ban Policy
Policy
The People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria has not yet acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
Algeria last made a substantive comment on the matter of joining the ban convention in December 2009, when an official told the Monitor that the government had decided not to sign the convention “at the present time” after different relevant authorities conducted a study that took into consideration the internal situation in Algeria, its huge borders, and the positions of neighboring countries.[1]
In the past, Algeria expressed a preference for cluster munitions to be addressed within the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), but it has not indicated if this policy will be reviewed following the 2011 failure to conclude a CCW protocol on cluster munitions.
Algeria participated in several meetings of the Oslo Process, but did not attend the Dublin negotiations in May 2008 or the Oslo signing conference in December 2008.[2] Wikileaks released a United States (US) Department of State cable in September 2011 that shows US officials met with Algeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in February 2008 and “urged Algeria not to adopt any language that would interfere with cooperation efforts aimed at non-state parties.”[3]
Algeria participated in an international meeting on cluster munitions in Santiago, Chile in June 2010 and attended the convention’s intersessional meetings in Geneva since 2011, but has not attended any subsequent meetings relating to the convention. It was invited to, but did not attend, the Fourth Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Lusaka, Zambia in September 2013.
Algeria is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is not party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.
Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling
Algeria is not known to have used, produced, or exported cluster munitions. It is thought to have a stockpile of cluster munitions. Jane’s Information Group notes that KMG-U dispensers that deploy submunitions are in service for aircraft of the Algerian Air Force.[4] Also according to Jane’s, it possesses Grad 122mm, Uragan 220mm, and Smerch 300mm surface-to-surface rockets, but it is not known if these include versions with submunition payloads.[5]
[1] Interview with Hamza Khelif, Deputy Director of Disarmament, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mine Ban Treaty Second Review Conference, Cartagena, 4 December 2009.
[2] Algeria attended the international treaty preparatory conferences in Vienna in December 2007 and Wellington in February 2008, as well as a regional conference in Livingstone, Zambia in March/April 2008. For details on Algeria’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), p. 185.
[3] “Oslo Process and Banning Cluster Munitions,” US Department of State cable dated 19 February 2008, released by Wikileaks on 1 September 2011.
[4] Robert Hewson, ed., Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons, Issue 44 (Surrey, UK: Jane’s Information Group Limited, 2004), p. 835.
[5] Colin King, ed., Jane’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal, CD-edition, 14 December 2007 (Surrey, UK: Jane’s Information Group Limited, 2008).
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