Summary: State Party Sierra Leone was one of the first of 30 ratifications to trigger the convention’s entry into force on 1 August 2010. It has expressed its desire to enact national implementing legislation for the convention. Sierra Leone has participated in several meetings of the convention, most recently in 2013. It has condemned new use of cluster munitions. Sierra Leone states that it has never used, produced, stockpiled, or transferred cluster munitions. Cluster munitions were used in Sierra Leone in 1997.

Policy

The Republic of Sierra Leone signed and ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Oslo on 3 December 2008. It was among the first 30 ratifications that triggered entry into force of the convention on 1 August 2010.

Sierra Leone has expressed its desire to enact national implementing legislation for the convention, but the current status of this process was not known as of July 2015.[1] In 2011, Sierra Leone announced that it was working to adopt national legislation “prohibiting future possession, purchase, and use of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.”[2] In May 2013, an official said that implementing legislation had been drafted using model legislation provided by the ICRC.[3]

Sierra Leone submitted its initial Article 7 transparency report for the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 25 January 2011. As of 29 June 2016, it had not provided any of the updated reports required by 30 April each year.[4]

Sierra Leone participated in the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions and advocated for a strong convention text during the formal negotiations in Dublin in May 2008.[5]

Sierra Leone was invited to, but did not attend the convention’s First Review Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia in September 2015. It participated in the convention’s Meetings of States Parties in 2010, 2011, and 2013. Sierra Leone has also attended regional workshops on the convention, most recently in Lomé, Togo in May 2013.

On 7 December 2015, Sierra Leone was absent from the final vote on a UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution on the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which urges states outside the convention to “join as soon as possible.”[6] However, it voted in favor of the draft resolution during the first round of voting in November 2015.[7]

Sierra Leone has condemned new use of cluster munitions “in the strongest terms.”[8] It has voted in favor of UNGA resolutions condemning the use of cluster munitions in Syria, most recently in December 2015.[9] Sierra Leone has voted in favor of Human Rights Council resolutions condemning the use of cluster munitions in Syria, most recently on 2 July 2015.[10]

Sierra Leone has not yet elaborated its views on certain important issues relating to the interpretation and implementation of the convention, including the prohibition on transit, the prohibition on assistance during joint military operations with states not party that may use cluster munitions, the prohibition on foreign stockpiling of cluster munitions, and the prohibition on investment in production of cluster munitions.

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

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Sierra Leone has stated several times that it has never used, produced, stockpiled, or transferred cluster munitions.[11] It must formally confirm this cluster munition-free status by providing its Article 7 transparency report.

Sierra Leone has reported that cluster munitions were stockpiled in the country during the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) intervention in 1998 and 1999.[12] According to sources close to the Sierra Leonean military, in 1997 Nigerian forces operating as ECOMOG peacekeepers dropped two cluster bombs on Lokosama, near Port Loko. ECOMOG Force Commander General Victor Malu denied these reports.[13] According to media reports, Nigerian ECOMOG peacekeepers used French-produced BLG-66 Belouga cluster bombs in an attack on the eastern town of Kenema in Sierra Leone in 1997.[14]

In May 2012, Sierra Leone reaffirmed these allegations of cluster munition use.[15] In September 2012, Nigeria again denied the cluster munition use.[16]

Sierra Leone has reported that an unknown quantity of M42, M46, and M77 submunitions were destroyed by open detonation in 2001 at Aberdeen Beach near Freetown by an explosive ordnance disposal team from the United Kingdom.[17]