Venezuela

Policy

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has not yet acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

There is no update available on Venezuela’s views on joining the ban convention. Venezuela last made a statement on cluster munitions in November 2011 during the failed Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) negotiations on a cluster munition protocol, when its representative said Venezuela “fully supports unstintingly all efforts to address the humanitarian issue of the use of cluster munitions against civilian populations” and noted “a binding tool leading us to a prohibition of the use, stockpiling, [and] transfer…would be the ideal” but “we are far from achieving it.”[1]

Venezuela participated in several meetings of the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions, but when it joined in the consensus adoption of the convention text in Dublin on 30 May 2008, it expressed its opposition to the convention’s Article 21 provisions on “interoperability” (relations with states not party), which it said “[undermines] the spirit and purpose” of the convention.[2]

Venezuela has participated in just one meeting of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, the Second Meeting of States Parties in Beirut, Lebanon in September 2011, which it attended as an observer. Venezuela was invited to, but did not participate in, a regional workshop on cluster munitions in Santiago, Chile in December 2013.

Venezuela has not expressed its view on Syria’s use of cluster munitions, which has been widely condemned.

Venezuela is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is also party to the CCW.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Venezuela is not known to have used, produced, or exported cluster munitions.

Venezuela was not known to have imported or stockpiled cluster munitions until an August 2011 statement by the Ministry of the Popular Power for the Defense of Venezuela announcing the destruction of cluster munitions belonging to the Air Force of Venezuela.[3] According to the statement, the stockpile destruction was undertaken at Fort Caribbean in El Pao, Cojedes as part of “Operation Bachaco” to destroy surplus ammunition and ordnance. According to a Ministry of Defense spokesperson, the ordnance destroyed included Israeli-made AS TAL-1 cluster bombs, acquired for use with F-16A fighter aircraft. The number of cluster munitions destroyed was not reported.

It is not clear if Venezuela has other stockpiles of TAL-1 cluster bombs or other cluster munitions. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has reported that Israel exported the LAR-160 surface-to-surface rocket system to Venezuela, but it is not known if ammunition containing submunitions was included in the deal.[4]