Policy

The Republic of Djibouti signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997 and ratified it on 18 May 1998, becoming a State Party on 1 March 1999. The president signed national implementation legislation on 11 March 2006.[1] The law also created a national commission responsible for application of the law.

Djibouti attended its first meeting of the treaty in a decade when it attended the Seventeenth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in November 2018. Djibouti did not attend the Third Review Conference in Maputo in June 2014. Djibouti last submitted an Article 7 transparency report in 2005.

Djibouti is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), but is not party to its Amended Protocol II on landmines or CCW Protocol V on explosive remnants of war. Djibouti is not party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Production, transfer, stockpiling, and retention

Djibouti reported that it has not produced antipersonnel mines. It is not known to have ever exported mines.[2]

On 2 March 2003, one day after its treaty-mandated deadline, Djibouti destroyed the last of its stockpile of 1,118 antipersonnel mines.[3] In 2005, Djibouti reported that it retained 2,996 antipersonnel mines for training purposes, the same number it first declared in January 2003.[4] It has not provided an update since that time and has never reported in any detail on the intended purposes and actual uses of its retained mines—a step agreed by States Parties at the Mine Ban Treaty’s First Review Conference in November–December 2004.

Use

Both the government and the Front for the Restoration of Unity and Democracy used landmines around military positions and on access roads during the 1991–1994 civil war.[5]