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Somalia
Cluster Munition Ban Policy
Policy
The Somali Republic signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008.
The exact status of Somalia’s ratification of the convention was not clear as of June 2014.[1] Previously, in April 2013, a representative of the Somalia National Mine Action Agency (SNMAA) informed the Monitor that continuing political instability and a full political agenda has stalled ratification of the convention, but emphasized that the presidency is still committed to ratification.[2] In September 2011, Somalia stated that ratification of the convention was with “the Council of Ministers of the Somalia Transitional Federal Government to be discussed, approved and presented to the Transitional Federal Parliament of Somalia to ratify.”[3]
Somalia attended one meeting of the Oslo Process that produced the convention (Vienna in December 2007).[4]
Somalia has engaged in some meetings of the Convention on Cluster Munitions since 2008. It participated in the convention’s Second Meeting of States Parties in Beirut, Lebanon in September 2011 and attended the convention’s intersessional meetings in Geneva in 2013 and April 2014.
Somalia has voted in favor of 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 Syria’s “continued widespread and systematic gross violations of human rights…including those involving the use of…cluster munitions.”[5]
Somalia acceded to the Mine Ban Treaty on 16 April 2012. It is not party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.
Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling
Somalia is not known to have used, produced, transferred, or stockpiled cluster munitions.
Cluster munition contamination believed to date from the 1977–1978 Ogaden War between Somalia and Ethiopia was discovered in 2013, but it is unclear who was responsible for the use.[6]
[1] Meeting with campaigner Dahir Abdirrahman, 5 May 2014
[2] Interview with Mohammed A. Ahmed, Director, SNMAA, in Geneva, 16 April 2013.
[3] Statement of Somalia, Convention on Cluster Munitions Second Meeting of States Parties, Beirut, 14 September 2011.
[4] For details on Somalia’s policy and practice regarding cluster munitions through early 2009, see Human Rights Watch and Landmine Action, Banning Cluster Munitions: Government Policy and Practice (Ottawa: Mines Action Canada, May 2009), p. 153.
[5] “Situation of human rights in the Syrian Arab Republic,” UNGA Resolution A/RES/68/182, 18 December 2013. Somalia voted in favor of a similar resolution on 15 May 2013.
[6] In April 2013, the director of SNMAA informed the Monitor that cluster munition remnants were recently discovered near Somalia’s border with Ethiopia and the area is being surveyed to determine the extent of contamination. According to available information, dozens of failed PTAB-2.5M and some AO-1SCh explosive submunitions have been found within a 30-kilometer radius of the Somali border town of Dolow. It is not possible to determine definitively who was responsible for this cluster munition use. The Soviet Union supplied both sides in the Ogaden War, and foreign military forces known to have cluster munitions fought in support of Ethiopia, including the Soviet Union and Cuba. Email from Mohammed A. Ahmed, SNMAA, 17 April 2013. Photographs of the cluster munition remnants are available here.
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