Commitment to the Convention on Cluster Munitions

Policy

The Central African Republic signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008.

Government representatives have informed the CMC that internal conflict between the government and rebel forces has prevented ratification of the convention from proceeding.[1] The Seleka coalition of different rebel groups led by Michel Djotodia took control of the national government on 24 March 2013. At the request of neighboring nations, a National Transitional Council was formed. Djotodia departed office in January 2014 and the National Transitional Council subsequently elected Catherine Samba-Panza as interim president.

Prior to the current conflict, government officials indicated that the ratification was on track.[2]

The Central African Republic participated in a regional meeting (Kampala, Uganda in September 2008) of the diplomatic Oslo Process that created the convention.[3] It has participated in several meetings related to the convention since 2008, including regional conferences on cluster munitions held in Accra, Ghana in May 2012 and in Lomé, Togo in May 2013.

The Central African Republic attended the Fourth Meeting of States Parties in Lusaka, Zambia in September 2013, but did not make a statement. It has not participated in the convention’s intersessional meetings held in Geneva.

At the Lomé regional seminar on the convention, the Central African Republic did not make a statement, but its representative discussed the status of ratification with the CMC. The Central African Republic endorsed the Lomé Strategy on the Universalization of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which commits governments to undertake specific and concerted actions to ensure that all African states that have not yet ratified or acceded to the convention to do so at the earliest opportunity.

The Central African Republic has not made a national statement condemning Syria’s use of cluster munitions, but it voted in favor of a UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution that strongly condemned “the use by the Syrian authorities of...cluster munitions” on 15 May 2013.[4] The Central African Republic also endorsed the Lomé Strategy, 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.[5]

The Central African Republic is party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is not party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

The Central African Republic has stated that it has never used, produced, or transferred cluster munitions and that it is not affected by cluster munition remnants.[6] In September 2011, the Central African Republic stated that it had destroyed a considerable stockpile of cluster munitions.[7] In May 2012, a government representative clarified that the cluster munitions were recovered from a non-state armed group operating within the country.[8]