Summary

State Party Somalia ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 30 September 2015, after participating in several meetings of the convention.

Somalia provided an initial Article 7 transparency report for the convention in October 2019, which formally confirmed that it has never produced cluster munitions and possesses no stocks, including for research or training. It has not been possible to determine responsibility for past use of cluster munitions in Somalia’s border areas.

Policy

The Federal Republic of Somalia signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008 and ratified it on 30 September 2015. The convention entered into force for the country on 1 March 2016.

Somalia reported in October 2019 that it plans to enact national implementing legislation to guide and enforce the convention’s provisions.[1]

Somalia submitted its initial Article 7 transparency report for the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 11 October 2019.[2] It last provided an annual updated report in September 2020.[3]

Somalia attended one meeting of the Oslo Process that created the convention, in Vienna, Austria in December 2007.[4]

Somalia last participated in a meeting of the convention in 2014.[5] It was invited to, but did not attend, the convention’s Second Review Conference held in November 2020 and September 2021.

In December 2021, Somalia was absent from the vote on a key United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution urging full implementation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions.[6] Somalia voted in favor of the annual UNGA resolution promoting the convention in 2015–2017, but has been absent from the vote since then.

Somalia has denounced new use of cluster munitions.[7]

Somalia is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is not party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW).

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Somalia reported in October 2019 that it has never produced cluster munitions and does not possess any stocks, including for research and training purposes.[8] Previously, Somalia told States Parties in 2014 that it was “not a user, producer, or stockpiling state.”[9]

Cluster munition remnants from past use, by unknown actors, have been cleared from border areas of Somalia.[10]

Previous use

In March 2016, the governor of Somalia’s Gedo region, Mohamed Abdi Kalil, accused the Kenyan Defence Forces (KDF) of “using illegal cluster bombs” in its air operation against the non-state armed group (NSAG) al-Shabaab near Bardere city on 15–23 January 2016.[11] Kenya, a signatory to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, denied the allegation.[12] On the basis of available evidence, the Monitor could not conclusively determine if Kenya used cluster munitions in this incident.[13]

A United Nations (UN) Monitoring Group investigation reported that al-Shabaab had repurposed unexploded submunitions from BL755 cluster munitions as components for improvised explosive devices (IEDs), according to items in an arms cache seized by forces fighting against al-Shabaab in Bardera on 7 March 2016.[14]

Cluster munition remnants believed to date from the 1977–1978 Ogaden War between Somalia and Ethiopia have been cleared and destroyed from border areas, but it is unclear who was responsible for this use.[15] Somalia has said that the cluster munition contamination near its border with Ethiopia dates from the “border wars of 1978–1984,” but has not indicated who was responsible for using the weapons.[16]