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Tunisia

Last Updated: 12 August 2014

Cluster Munition Ban Policy

Policy

The Republic of Tunisia signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 12 January 2009, ratified on 28 September 2010, and the convention entered into force for the country on 1 March 2011.

In April 2011, Tunisia informed the Monitor that it adheres to the convention under the terms of its ratification law enacted in February 2010.

As of 27 June 2014, Tunisia still had not submitted its initial Article 7 report for the Convention on Cluster Munitions, originally due by 28 August 2011.

Tunisia participated in one regional meeting of the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions (Livingstone, Zambia in March 2008) and was the first country to sign the convention after it was opened for signature in Oslo in December 2008.[1]

Tunisia has continued to engage in the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It attended the convention’s Meetings of States Parties in 2011 and 2012, but was absent from the Fourth Meeting of States Parties in Lusaka, Zambia in September 2013. Tunisia participated in the convention’s intersessional meetings in Geneva in 2012 and April 2014, but did not make any statements.

Tunisia 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.”[2]

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

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Tunisia informed the Monitor in April 2011 that it has never used, produced, transferred, or stockpiled cluster munitions.[3]

Tunisia is reported to possess the Hydra-70 air-to-surface unguided rocket system, but it is not known if the ammunition types available to it include the M261 Multi-Purpose Submunition rocket.[4]



[1] For details on Tunisia’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. 171.

[2]Situation of human rights in the Syrian Arab Republic,” UNGA Resolution A/RES/68/182, 18 December 2013. Tunisia voted in favor of a similar resolution on 15 May 2013.

[3] “La Tunisie n’a aucune activité en lien avec la production, le stockage, le transfert ou l’utilisation des armes à sous-munitions.” Letter from Permanent Mission of Tunisia to the UN in Geneva to Mary Wareham, Human Rights Watch, 10 April 2011.

[4] Colin King, ed., Jane’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal 2007–2008, CD-edition, 15 January 2008 (Surrey, UK: Jane’s Information Group Limited, 2008).