Policy

Guinea-Bissau signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997 and ratified it on 22 May 2001, becoming a State Party on 1 November 2001. In December 2004, the Minister of Foreign Affairs said Guinea-Bissau was planning to enact domestic legislation to implement the treaty,[1] but in July 2007, the director of the National Mine Action Coordination Center (CAAMI) told the Monitor that the government would not adopt a new law as the treaty automatically became national law under the constitution, making mine-related crimes subject to existing penal sanctions.[2] Guinea-Bissau has reported that the Mine Ban Treaty was approved by parliament on 13 December 2000 and subsequently by the office of the president by a decree, thus entering the Convention’s obligations into law in Guinea-Bissau.[3]

Guinea-Bissau previously regularly attended meetings of the treaty, but has not done so since it attended the Third Review Conference in Maputo in June 2014. Guinea-Bissau submitted its 10^th Mine Ban Treaty Article 7 report in 2011, but has not submitted subsequent reports.

Guinea-Bissau is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons and its Amended Protocol II on landmines and Protocol V on explosive remnants of war. Guinea-Bissau is also party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Production, transfer, stockpiling, and retention

Guinea-Bissau has reported that it never produced or exported antipersonnel mines. On 17 October 2005, Guinea-Bissau destroyed the last of its 10,654 stockpiled antipersonnel mines, just ahead of its stockpile destruction deadline of 1 November 2005.[4]

In December 2011, Guinea-Bissau demonstrated transparency by reporting that an ammunition storage assessment conducted jointly with the UN Mine Action Service had identified a small number of additional stockpiled antipersonnel mines in the military bases of Quebo and Gabu.[5] Seven PMN mines were found, as well as two boxes containing an undetermined number of POMZ-2 mines. Guinea-Bissau stated its intention to destroy them no later than 31 March 2012, but as of September 2012 the Monitor had not received a confirmation that the mines had been destroyed. Under the Cartagena Action Plan, a State Party that discovers stockpiled mines after the expiration of its deadline must share such information with States Parties as soon as possible and destroy the mines as a matter of urgent priority.

In its 2008 Article 7 report, Guinea-Bissau reported having retained 109 mines for training purposes.[6] However, 100 of these—50 POMZ-2 and 50 PMD-6—were listed as “disarmed.”[7] In its 2009 report, Guinea-Bissau stated that the 50 POMZ-2 mines had been recycled for metal use, and the 50 PMD-6 mines had also been destroyed.[8] In its subsequent Article 7 reports, Guinea-Bissau listed only nine mines as retained for training: six PMN, one M409, and two M969 mines. Most recently, in 2011, Guinea-Bissau reported that there was no training underway.[9]

Use

There have been no reports of use of antipersonnel mines in Guinea-Bissau since March and April 2006, when a faction of the Senegal-based Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de la Casamance, MFDC) fled from Senegal and laid both antipersonnel and antivehicle mines in northern Guinea-Bissau.[10]