Policy

The Republic of Sierra Leone signed and ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Oslo on 3 December 2008. It was among the first 30 ratifications that triggered entry into force of the convention on 1 August 2010.

Sierra Leone has not declared any national implementation measures, but it is believed to be considering preparing draft implementing legislation specific to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.[1] In 2011, Sierra Leone announced that it was working to adopt comprehensive national legislation “prohibiting future possession, purchase, and use of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.”[2] In May 2013, an official said that draft implementation legislation had been prepared using model legislation provided by the ICRC.[3]

Sierra Leone submitted its initial Article 7 transparency report for the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 25 January 2011 but, as of 28 June 2014, had not provided any of the updated reports required by 30 April each year, including the one due in 2014.[4]

Sierra Leone participated in the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions and advocated for a strong convention text during the formal negotiations in Dublin in May 2008.[5]

Sierra Leone has continued to engage in the work of the Convention on Cluster Munitions since 2008. It participated in the convention’s Meeting of States Parties in 2010, 2011, and the Fourth Meeting of States Parties in Lusaka, Zambia in September 2013. Sierra Leone has never attended the convention’s intersessional meetings in Geneva, such as those held in April 2014. Sierra Leone participated in a regional meeting of the convention in Lomé, Togo in May 2013.

Sierra Leone voted in favor of UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 68/182 on 18 December 2013 which expressed “outrage” at the Syrian government’s “continued widespread and systematic gross violations of human rights…including those involving the use of…cluster munitions.”[6] Previously, in May 2013, Sierra Leone said it remains “deeply concerned that Cluster Munitions continue to be used by some countries that are not party to the Convention, causing untold suffering to innocent civilians” and condemned “in the strongest terms the previous, recent and any further use” of cluster munitions.[7]

Sierra Leone has not yet provided its views on certain important issues related to interpretation and implementation of the convention, including the prohibition on transit, the prohibition on assistance during joint military operations with states not party that may use cluster munitions, the prohibition on foreign stockpiling of cluster munitions, and the prohibition on investment in production of cluster munitions.

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

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Sierra Leone has stated several times that it has never used, produced, stockpiled, or transferred cluster munitions.[8]

Sierra Leone has reported that cluster munitions were stockpiled in the country during the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) intervention in 1998 and 1999.[9] According to sources close to the Sierra Leonean military, in 1997 Nigerian forces operating as ECOMOG peacekeepers dropped two cluster bombs on Lokosama, near Port Loko. ECOMOG Force Commander General Victor Malu denied these reports.[10] According to media reports, Nigerian ECOMOG peacekeepers used French-produced BLG-66 Belouga cluster bombs in an attack on the eastern town of Kenema in Sierra Leone in 1997.[11]

In May 2012, Sierra Leone reaffirmed these allegations of cluster munition use.[12] In September 2012, Nigeria again denied the cluster munition use.[13]

Sierra Leone has reported that an unknown quantity of M42, M46, and M77 submunitions were destroyed by open detonation in 2001 at Aberdeen Beach near Freetown by an explosive ordnance disposal team from the United Kingdom.[14]