Five-Year Review: State Party Lithuania ratified the convention on 24March 2011. It has declared existing legislation as sufficient to enforce its implementation of the convention. Lithuania has participating in all of the convention’s meetings and has condemned the use of cluster munitions, including in Ukraine. Lithuania has provided transparency measures reports for the convention since 2010, confirming it has never produced, used, transferred, or stockpiled cluster munitions.

Policy

The Republic of Lithuania signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008, ratified on 24 March 2011, and the convention entered into force for the country on 1 September 2011.

Lithuania has declared its 2010 ratification law and the Criminal Code of 26 September 2000 as sufficient measures to implement the convention’s provision domestically.[1] A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official informed the Monitor in 2011 that international treaties are applied directly under Lithuania’s legal system so specific implementation legislation is not necessary for the Convention on Cluster Munitions.[2]

Lithuania submitted a voluntary Article 7 transparency report for the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 30 March 2010 and provided annual updated reports in 2012, 2013, and 2014.[3] As of 5 June 2015, Lithuania had yet to provide the annual update due 30 April 2015.

Lithuania actively participated in the Oslo Process that created the convention.[4]

Lithuania engages in the work of the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It participated in the convention’s Meeting of States Parties in 2011 and 2012, and the Fifth Meeting of States Parties held in San José, Costa Rica in September 2014. Lithuania has attended all of the convention’s intersessional meetings in Geneva except those held in April 2014 and June 2015.

Lithuania said it is “deeply concerned” at the recent use of cluster munitions in countries including Syria during the UN General Assembly (UNGA) First Committee on Disarmament and International Security in October 2013.[5] It has voted in favor of UNGA resolutions condemning the use of cluster munitions in Syria, including Resolution 69/189 on 18 December 2014, which expressed “outrage” at the continued use.[6]

As a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, Lithuania expressed concern at the use of cluster munitions in Ukraine during an October 2014 debate and commented that joining the Convention on Cluster Munitions would be the “best antidote” to address concerns raised.[7] Lithuania voted in favor of a June 2015 resolution that expressed concern at evidence of cluster munition use by the government of Sudan and reiterated a call by the Secretary-General for Sudan to “immediately investigate the use of cluster munitions.”[8] Lithuania endorsed Security Council Resolution 2155 in May 2014, which expressed concern at the use of cluster munitions in South Sudan and called for “all parties to refrain from similar such use in the future.”[9]

During the Oslo Process, Lithuania supported the inclusion of provisions on interoperability (joint military operations with states not party), but in the period since it has not elaborated its views on assistance with acts prohibited by the convention or other important interpretive matters, such as the transit of cluster munitions through, and foreign stockpiling of cluster munitions on, the national territory of States Parties, and investment in production of cluster munitions.[10]

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

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Lithuania has declared that it “does not possess cluster munitions and has never produced, used, stockpiled or transferred such weapons in the past.”[11]

Policy

The Republic of Lithuania signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 22 February 1999 and ratified it on 12 May 2003, becoming a State Party on 1 November 2003. Production and import/export of antipersonnel mines have not been licensed since 1990, and an export moratorium has been in place since 1998. Lithuania states that its law provides for the imposition of penal sanctions as required by the treaty.

Lithuania has attended some meetings of the treaty, most recently the Seventeenth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in December 2018 and the intersessional meetings in Geneva in May 2019. It did not provide a statement at either meeting. Lithuania did not attend the Third Review Conference in Maputo in June 2014. Previously, Lithuania served on the Standing Committee on Stockpile Destruction from 2006-2009 and in 2011.

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

Production, use, transfer, and stockpiling

Lithuania has not produced antipersonnel mines. Lithuania possessed a stock of 8,091 antipersonnel mines of Soviet origin, including four types.[1] Lithuania’s Article 7 report submitted in April 2004 revealed that two types (PMN and MON-50) were included in the stockpile destruction program. The other two types (MON-100 and OZM-72) were “changed to remotely controlled” and retained.

Lithuania completed destruction of its stockpile of 4,104 antipersonnel mines on 7 June 2004. Lithuania retained 1,488 mines for training purposes by the end of 2011.In 2013, most of these were transferred for destruction, and by the end of 2016 Lithuania no longer retained any mines for training.[2]

Lithuania is contaminated by unexploded ordnance from World War II but there are no known mined areas.

In 2015, the Republic of Lithuania contributed US$6,829 in mine action funding to UNMAS and Georgia through the NATO Support Agency for clearance efforts and the provision of explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) training.[1] This represents a 59% drop from 2014, and six times less than the $42,967 contributed in 2011.

Since 2011, Lithuania’s support to mine action totaled nearly $90,000, of which 48% was provided in 2011.

Summary of contributions: 2011–2015[2]