Policy

Mongolia has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Mongolia had not publicly articulated its views on the ban convention until September 2013, when its deputy permanent representative to the UN in Geneva attended the convention’s Fourth Meeting of States Parties in Lusaka, Zambia as an observer and made a statement. Mongolia informed States Parties that it “attaches a particular importance to the Convention on Cluster Munitions banning one [of] the most inhumane weapons of today, and supports the international efforts towards its universalization. We believe that the only guarantee against the risk of the use and proliferation of these weapons is their total elimination.”[1]

Later that month, Mongolian President Elbegdorj Tsakhia expressed regret at a high-level meeting on nuclear disarmament that the Conference on Disarmament “has not been able to live up to its expectation” and said “that is why international practice has demonstrated the indispensable role of coalitions of states and of NGOs, when the disarmament machinery fails, as exemplified by the successful conclusion of [the] landmines convention in 1997 and of the cluster munitions convention in 2008.”[2]

Mongolia did not participate in the 2007–2008 Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It first attended a meeting related to the convention in November 2009, when it participated in a regional workshop on cluster munitions in Bali, Indonesia. Mongolia attended the convention’s First Meeting of States Parties in Vientiane, Lao PDR in November 2010 as an observer, but did not make a statement. It did not attend any meetings again until September 2013.

Mongolia has voted in favor of recent UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions condemning Syria’s cluster munition use, including Resolution 68/182 on 18 December 2013, which expressed “outrage” at Syria’s “continued widespread and systematic gross violations of human rights…including those involving the use of…cluster munitions.”[3]

Mongolia is not party to the Mine Ban Treaty. Mongolia is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Mongolia is not known to have used, produced, or exported cluster munitions, but it is thought to have a stockpile. Jane’s Information Group reports that KMGU dispensers that deliver submunitions are in service with the country’s air force.[4] Mongolia also possesses Grad 122mm surface-to-surface launchers, but it is not known if these include rockets with submunition payloads.[5] It acquired 130 Grad launchers from the Soviet Union in 1975–1978.[6]