Ten-Year Review: State Party Somalia ratified the convention on 30 September 2015 after participating in several meetings of the convention. It last voted in favor of the annual United Nations (UN) resolution promoting the convention in December 2017. Somalia has condemned new use of cluster munitions.

Somalia provided its initial transparency report for the convention in October 2019, which formally confirmed it has never produced cluster munitions and possesses no stocks, including for research or training. It has not been possible to determine who used cluster munitions in the country’s border areas in the past.

Policy

The Somali Republic signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008 and ratified it on 30 September 2015. The convention entered into force for the country on 1 March 2016.

In October 2019, Somalia reported that it plans to enact national implementing legislation to guide and enforce the convention’s provisions.[1]

Somalia submitted its initial Article 7 transparency report for the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 11 October 2019.[2]

Somalia attended one meeting of the Oslo Process that produced the convention, in Vienna, Austria in December 2007.[3]

Somalia has participated in meetings of the convention, but not since 2014.[4] It was invited, but did not attend, the convention’s Ninth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in September 2019.

In December 2019, Somalia was absent during the vote on a key UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution urging implementation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions.[5] It voted in favor of the annual UNGA resolution promoting the convention in 2015–2017, but was absent in 2018.

Somalia has denounced new use of cluster munitions.[6] It has voted in favor of UNGA resolutions expressing outrage at the use of cluster munitions in Syria, most recently in June 2020.[7]

Somalia is a party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is not party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

In October 2019, Somalia formally reported that it has never produced cluster munitions and does not possesses any stocks, including for research and training purposes.[8] Previously, in 2014, Somalia told States Parties that it was “not a user, producer, or stockpiling state” of cluster munitions.[9]

Cluster munitions remnants from past use by unknown actors have been cleared from the country’s border areas.[10]

Previous use

In March 2016, the governor of Somalia’s Gedo region, Mohamed Abdi Kalil, accused the Kenyan Defence Force (KDF)of “using illegal cluster bombs” in its air operation against the non-state armed group al-Shabaab near Bardere city on 15–23 January 2016.[11] Kenya, a signatory to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, denied the allegation.[12] A UN investigation found that Kenyan forces did conduct air strikes in the Gedo region in January 2016, but could not confirm if Kenyan forces used cluster munitions in the attacks.[13] On the basis of available evidence, the Monitor also could not conclusively determine if Kenya used cluster munitions in this incident.

A UN Monitoring Group investigation reported that al-Shabaab repurposed unexploded submunitions from BL755 cluster munitions as components for improvised explosive devices, according to an arms cache seized by anti-al-Shabaab forces in Bardera on 7 March 2016.[14]

Previously, in 2013, mine clearance operators working in Somalia near the border with Ethiopia cleared cluster munition remnants believed to date from the 1977–1978 Ogaden War between Somalia and Ethiopia, but it is unclear who was responsible for this use.[15] Somalia has commented that the cluster munition contamination near its border with Ethiopia dates from the “border wars of 1978–1984,” but has not indicated who was responsible for this use.[16]