Summary

Non-signatory Georgia has expressed support for the Convention on Cluster Munitions, but says that national security concerns prevent it from acceding. Georgia last attended a meeting of the convention in 2012. Georgia abstained from the vote on the key annual United Nations (UN) resolution promoting the convention in December 2021.

There is no evidence that Georgia has produced or exported cluster munitions, but it inherited stocks after the break-up of the Soviet Union and imported them from Israel in 2007. Georgia last used cluster munitions in 2008 during the conflict with Russia over South Ossetia.

Policy

Georgia has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Georgia has not taken any steps to accede to the convention. It last commented on the matter in a 2010 response to the Monitor which expressed support for the convention’s “spirit” but said that Georgia is “reluctant to join…until the credible changes occur in the security environment of the region.”[1]

Georgia participated in several meetings of the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions.[2] It attended an international conference on cluster munitions held in Santiago, Chile in June 2010.

Georgia attended the convention’s Third Meeting of States Parties in Oslo, Norway in September 2012 as an observer, which marked its first and, to date, only attendance at a meeting of the convention. Georgia was invited to, but did not attend, the convention’s Second Review Conference held in November 2020 and September 2021.

In December 2021, Georgia abstained from the vote on a key United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution urging states outside the Convention on Cluster Munitions to “join as soon as possible.”[3] Georgia has abstained from voting on the annual UNGA resolution promoting the convention since it was first introduced in 2015.

Georgia has voted in favor of UNGA resolutions expressing outrage at use of cluster munitions in Syria.[4] It has also voted in favor of Human Rights Council resolutions condemning use of cluster munitions in Syria.[5]

Georgia is not party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW).

Production, transfer, and stockpiling

Georgia is not known to have produced or exported cluster munitions.

Georgia inherited a stockpile of air-dropped cluster bombs from the Soviet Union.[6] It also acquired Mk-4 160mm surface-to-surface cluster munition rockets, each containing 104 M85-type submunitions, from Israel in 2007.[7]

Georgia destroyed 844 RBK-series cluster bombs and 320,375 submunitions in 2013 as part of a project to destroy obsolete weapons, supported by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).[8] The last RBK-series bombs were destroyed by open detonation at the Vaziani military firing range outside Tbilisi on 12 July 2013.

Cluster munitions destroyed in Georgia[9]

Use

Georgian forces last used cluster munition rockets during the August 2008 conflict with Russia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Georgia’s Ministry of Defense said that it used 24 volleys with 13 Mk-4 cluster munition rockets in each.[10] The Ministry of Foreign Affairs acknowledged that Georgian armed forces used cluster munitions against Russian forces near the Roki tunnel.[11] Human Rights Watch (HRW) researchers found remnants of Georgian-fired cluster munitions in civilian areas in the north of Gori district, south of the South Ossetian administrative border.[12]