Commitment to the Convention on Cluster Munitions

Policy

The Republic of Hungary signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008, ratified on 3 July 2012, and the convention entered into force for the country on 1 January 2013.

Hungary’s penal code was amended in 2012 to classify cluster munitions as an internationally prohibited weapon and establish penal sanctions for their “procurement, use, manufacturing and transfer.”[1] Hungary has also declared its 2012 ratification law under national implementation measures.[2]

Hungary submitted its initial Article 7 transparency report for the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 8 April 2013, but, as of 27 June 2014, had not provided the annual updated report due 30 April 2014.[3]

Hungary actively participated throughout the Oslo Process that resulted in the convention.[4] In November 2007, Hungary enacted a national moratorium on the use of cluster munitions by its armed forces, which remained in place until it became a State Party.[5]

Hungary has continued to participate in the work of the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It attended the convention’s Meeting of States Parties in 2011, 2012, and the Fourth Meeting of States Parties in Lusaka, Zambia in September 2013. Hungary has participated in all of the convention’s intersessional meetings held in Geneva, including those held in April 2014.

Hungary has voted in favor of recent UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions condemning the Syrian government’s use of cluster munitions, including Resolution 68/182 on 18 December 2013, which expressed “outrage” at “continued widespread and systematic gross violations of human rights…including those involving the use of…cluster munitions.”[6]

Interpretive issues

In April 2011, Hungary expressed its views on a number of important matters relating to the interpretation and implementation of the convention:

·         Hungary believes that the convention prohibits both the transit across, and stockpiling on, the territory of a State Party of cluster munitions of foreign states;

·         Hungary believes that the convention prohibits assistance of acts prohibited by the convention to states not party;

·         Hungary believes that investment in the production of cluster munitions is prohibited by the convention.[7]

Hungary is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is also party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Use, production, and transfer

Hungary has stated that it has never used cluster munitions “in the course of an armed conflict” and has never produced cluster munitions.[8]

Stockpile destruction

In April 2013, Hungary declared the completion (between 24 March and 8 July 2011) of the destruction of its entire stockpile comprised of 287 cluster bombs and 3,954 submunitions of three different types: 247 BKF blocks containing 2,964 AO-2.5 submunitions, 23 BKF blocks containing 276 PTAB-2.5KO submunitions, and 17 RBK-250 cluster bombs containing 714 PTAB-2.5M submunitions.[9] The Hungarian Defence Forces destroyed the cluster munitions at Erdőkertes outside of Budapest.[10]

Hungary has declared that it does not retain any cluster munitions for training or research purposes.[11]