Policy

The Republic of Croatia signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 4 December 1997 and ratified it on 20 May 1998, becoming a State Party on 1 March 1999. It enacted national implementation legislation, including penal sanctions, in October 2004.[1] The law created a National Commission for the Coordination of Monitoring the Implementation of the Law.[2]

Croatia has consistently attended meetings of the treaty, including the Third Review Conference in Maputo in June 2014 and the Seventeenth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in November 2018, where it submitted an Article 5 extension request. Croatia also attended intersessional meetings in Geneva in May 2019. Croatia has served on the Standing Committee on Victim Assistance and Socio-Economic Reintegration (2011–2012, 2016–2017), and as Vice President of the Twelfth Meeting of States Parties in 2012 and the Seventeenth Meeting of States Parties in 2018.

Croatia is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) and its Amended Protocol II on landmines. Croatia is also party to CCW Protocol V on explosive remnants of war. It is also party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Production, transfer, stockpiling, and retention

Croatia has regularly stated that it has never produced antipersonnel mines.[3] It inherited stocks from the former Yugoslavia. There have been no reports of Croatia ever importing or exporting antipersonnel mines.

Croatia completed the destruction of its stockpile of 199,003 antipersonnel mines on 23 October 2002, in advance of its treaty deadline of 1 March 2003. Six types of mines were destroyed in three phases.[4] An additional 45,579 mine fuzes were destroyed during the stockpile destruction program.[5]

Croatia also possesses 19,076 MRUD Claymore-type directional fragmentation mines, which it does not classify as antipersonnel mines. It has repeatedly stated these mines cannot be activated by accidental contact, but has not reported on what steps it has taken to ensure that these mines can only be used in command-detonated mode.[6]

Initially, Croatia announced that it would retain 17,500 antipersonnel mines for training and development purposes, but in December 2000 decided to reduce this to 7,000.[7] Croatia reported that it retained 4,973 antipersonnel mines at the end of 2018.[8] The mines are stored at the Croatian Armed Forces storage site, “Borik” Velika Buna, and “are used or going to be used by the Croatian Mine Action Centre.”[9] In 2018, a total of three mines were destroyed during training and education of deminers.[10]

Use

All parties to the conflict in Croatia used landmines (1991–1995) and there is some evidence of mine use since the end of the war. During 1998 there were four mine incidents in the county of Lika apparently caused by new mine use. Antipersonnel mines were occasionally used in criminal activities in Croatia up to 2003.