Five-Year Review: State Party Czech Republic enacted implementing legislation for the convention before it ratified on 22 September 2011. The Czech Republic has participated in all of the convention’s meetings and has expressed deep concern at the use of cluster munitions in South Sudan, Ukraine, and Syria.

The Czech Republic submitted its initial transparency report for the convention in August 2012, confirming it has never used or produced cluster munitions. In November 2010, the Czech Republic announced the completion of the destruction of its stockpile of 191 cluster bombs, including 16,400 individual submunitions. At the time, it stated that 796 individual submunitions would be retained for training; that number has decreased over the course of training, to a total of 67 submunitions in April 2015.

Policy

The Czech Republic signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008, ratified on 22 September 2011, and the convention entered into force for the country on 1 March 2012.

Law No. 213 on the Prohibition of the Use, Development, Production, and Transfer of Cluster Munitions and their Destruction, which took effect on 1 March 2012, serves as the Czech Republic’s implementing legislation for the convention.[1] The legislation does not include penal sanctions for violations as provisions of the general Criminal Code of the Czech Republic apply instead.[2]

The Czech Republic submitted its initial Article 7 transparency report for the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 28 August 2012 and has provided updated annual reports since 2013, most recently on 24 April 2015.[3]

The Czech Republic participated in the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions and its position evolved over time to support the comprehensive prohibition on cluster munitions.[4]

The Czech Republic has actively engaged in the work of the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It has attended every Meeting of States Parties of the convention, including the Fifth Meeting of States Parties in San José, Costa Rica in September 2014, where it did not make a statement. The Czech Republic has participated in all of the convention’s intersessional meetings in Geneva, with the exception of those held in April 2014.

The Czech Republic has condemned the use of cluster munitions in Syria since 2013, and in South Sudan and Ukraine since 2014.[5]

At the UN General Assembly (UNGA) First Committee on Disarmament and International Security in October 2014, the Czech Republic reiterated its “strong support” for the convention and expressed its “deep concern” at the use of cluster munitions in Syria, South Sudan, and Ukraine.[6]

The Czech Republic has also voted in favor of UNGA resolutions condemning the use of cluster munitions in Syria, including UNGA Resolution 69/189 on 18 December 2014, which expressed “outrage” at the continued use of cluster munitions.[7] It co-sponsored a previous UNGA resolution in 2013 that also strongly condemned the use of cluster munitions in Syria.[8]  

The Czech Republic is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is also party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Interpretive issues

The Czech Republic has provided its views on a number of important issues related to interpretation and implementation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, including the prohibition on assistance during joint military operations with states not party that may use cluster munitions, the prohibition on transit of cluster munitions, the prohibition on foreign stockpiling of cluster munitions, and the prohibition on investment in production of cluster munitions.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Czech Republic considers that assistance with prohibited acts in joint military operations prohibited under the convention and any assistance with states not party during joint operations “shall not go beyond Article 21 together with Article 1 of the Convention.” The Czech Republic believes that “the transit of cluster munitions across the territory of the Czech Republic as well as the stockpiling of foreign cluster munitions on the territory of the Czech Republic is prohibited by the Convention.” The ministry also expressed the Czech Republic’s view that under the Convention on Cluster Munitions, “investment in the production of cluster munitions is prohibited.”[9]

Use, production, and transfer

The Czech Republic has stated that it “has never used any cluster munitions in military operations.”[10] It has formally declared the “Czech Republic has no production facilities for cluster munitions.”[11]

Stockpiling and destruction

The Czech Republic once possessed a stockpile consisting of 191 RBK-500 cluster bombs containing PTAB-2.5, AO-10, and AO-2.5RT submunitions and 289 BFK cartridges (also called “blocks”) containing AO-2.5RT, and PTAB-2.5 submunitions for KMG-U dispensers, as well as 16,400 individual submunitions of five types[12] (see table below). The stockpile was completely destroyed in 2010, prior to entry into force of the convention for the Czech Republic.[13]

Cluster munitions destroyed by the Czech Republic[14]

The cluster munitions were removed from operational stockpiles in 2006 and destroyed by the Czech Army between 2007 and 2010 at military bases as well as by civilian commercial contracting partners at facilities in the Czech Republic. The initial Article 7 report provides a detailed accounting of the types of cluster munitions and the dates, locations, and methods of their destruction.[15]

Retention

The Czech Republic’s national law allows the army to retain explosive submunitions for training purposes as permitted under Article 3 of the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

In its April 2015 Article 7 report, the Czech Republic declared the retention of a total of 67 explosive submunitions for training and research purposes as of 31 December 2014.[16] It has stated that these submunitions have “no air or surface-fired means of delivery.”[17]

The 67 submunitions the Czech Republic has retained for training represent a small fraction of the 796 submunitions that it initially stated, in November 2010, would be retained for training explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) personnel. The number of submunitions consumed over the course of training has fallen from 796 submunitions in November 2010, to 653 in May 2011, to 461 in May 2012, to 293 in December 2012, to 100 in December 2013, and to 67 in December 2014.[18] The Czech Republic reported using 33 submunitions for the training of its armed forces in cluster munitions detection and clearance techniques in 2014.[19]

Policy

The Czech Republic signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997 and ratified it on 26 October 1999, becoming a State Party on 1 April 2000. National implementation legislation entered into force on 3 December 1999 and the criminal code was amended to provide penal sanctions for violations of the treaty.

The Czech Republic submits annual Mine Ban Treaty Article 7 reports. It attends meetings of the treaty semi-regularly, but did not attend the Third Review Conference in Maputo in June 2014. It did attend the Seventeenth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in November 2018 and the intersessional meetings in Geneva in June 2019, but did not provide a statement at either meeting.

In December 2018, the Czech Republic voted in favor of UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 73/61 promoting implementation of the Mine Ban Treaty, as it has done in previous years.[1]

The Czech Republic is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons and its Amended Protocol II on landmines and Protocol V on explosive remnants of war. It is also party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Production, transfer, use, and stockpiling

The Czech Republic completed destruction of its stockpile of 324,412 antipersonnel mines on 15 June 2001, far in advance of its 1 April 2004 treaty-mandated destruction deadline. The Czech Republic initially retained 4,849 mines for training and development purposes, which was reduced to 2,180 by the end of 2018.[2]

The former Czechoslovakia was a significant producer and exporter of arms, including antipersonnel mines. The Czech Republic inherited the landmine production facilities when the country divided.[3] Czechoslovak state factories produced ten types of antipersonnel landmines: the PP-Mi-Ba, the PP-Mi-D, the PP-Mi-D II, the PP-Mi-Sb, the PP-Mi-Sr, the PP-Mi-Sr II, the PP-Mi-St-46, the PP-Mi-Na, the PP-Mi-S1, and the PP-Mi-Sk.[4] Czechoslovakian mines were widely exported and used in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, the former East Germany, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Africa, and Zambia.[5] Production ceased in 1989. The Czech Republic imposed a three-year moratorium on antipersonnel mine exports in October 1994, and extended it indefinitely in November 1997.

The Czech Republic has no known mined areas, but unexploded ordnance (UXO) from World War II are still found. In 2004, the Czech Republic finished clearing two military areas contaminated by World War II UXO.

In 2018, the Czech Republic contributed US$65,684 in mine action funding to two countries, as well as for global activities. This represents a more than four-fifths decrease (86%) compared to 2017.

Contributions by recipient: 2018[1]

Since 2014, the Czech Republic’s support to mine action has been inconsistent with annual contributions reaching a high of $456,987 in 2017 and a low of some $65,000 in 2018.

Summary of contributions 2014–2018[2]