Mongolia
Cluster Munition Ban Policy
Summary
Non-signatory Mongolia has shown interest in the Convention on Cluster Munitions, but has not taken any steps to join it. Mongolia last participated in a meeting of the convention in 2019. It voted in favor of a key United Nations (UN) resolution promoting the convention in December 2021.
Mongolia is not known to have used, produced, or exported cluster munitions. In 2014, a government representative said that Mongolia does not possess any stocks of cluster munitions.
Policy
Mongolia has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
Mongolian officials have expressed interest in the convention, but no steps have been taken to accede to it. Mongolia has called cluster munitions “one of the most inhumane weapons of today,” and told States Parties that “the only guarantee against the risk of the use and proliferation of these weapons is their total elimination.”[1]
Mongolia did not participate in the Oslo Process that created the convention. Mongolia first participated in a meeting related to the convention in November 2009, when it attended a regional workshop on cluster munitions held in Bali, Indonesia.
Mongolia has participated as an observer at several of the convention’s meetings, most recently the Ninth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in September 2019.[2] It was invited to, but did not attend, the convention’s Second Review Conference held in November 2020 and September 2021.
In December 2021, Mongolia voted in favor of a key United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution urging states outside the Convention on Cluster Munitions to “join as soon as possible.”[3] Mongolia has voted in favor of the annual resolution promoting the convention since it was first introduced in 2015.
Mongolia is not party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW).
Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling
Mongolia is not known to have used, produced, or exported cluster munitions.
In September 2014, a representative of the Mongolian Armed Forces told the Monitor that Mongolia possesses no stockpiles of cluster munitions.[4]
Jane’s Information Group reported in 2004 that the country’s air force had KMGU dispensers that deliver submunitions.[5] Mongolia possesses Grad 122mm surface-to-surface launchers, but it is not known whether these include rockets with submunition payloads.[6]
[1] Statement of Mongolia, Convention on Cluster Munitions Fourth Meeting of States Parties, Lusaka, 10 September 2013. Also in September 2013, Mongolia’s then-President Elbegdorj Tsakhia praised “the indispensable role of coalitions of states and of NGOs, when the disarmament machinery fails, as exemplified by the successful conclusion of the landmines convention in 1997 and of the cluster munitions convention in 2008.” Statement of President Elbegdorj Tsakhia of Mongolia, High-Level Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Nuclear Disarmament, New York, 26 September 2013.
[2] Mongolia participated as an observer at the convention’s Meetings of States Parties in 2010 and 2013–2014. It has also attended regional workshops on the convention, such as one hosted by the Philippines in Manila on 18–19 June 2019. Mongolia did not attend the First Review Conference in Dubrovnik in September 2015, or the convention’s intersessional meetings in Geneva in 2011–2015.
[3] “Implementation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions,” UNGA Resolution 76/47, 6 December 2021.
[4] Monitor interview with Col. Badarch Khadbaatar, Chief of Military Weaponry, General Staff of the Armed Forces of Mongolia, in San Jose, 2 September 2014. The Monitor has listed Mongolia as a stockpiler since the publication of the first Cluster Munition Monitor report in 2010, and will continue to do so until Mongolia provides a written statement confirming that it does not stockpile cluster munitions.
[5] Robert Hewson, ed., Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons, Issue 44 (Surrey: Jane’s Information Group, 2004), p. 842.
[6] International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), The Military Balance 2011 (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 259.