Five-Year Review: Non-signatory Algeria has expressed opposition to cluster munitions. It last commented on the convention in 2009, when it said it was not prepared to sign. Algeria has not participated in any meetings of the convention. It has expressed a preference for cluster munitions to be regulated through the Convention on Conventional Weapons, which it acceded to in May 2015.

Algeria is not known to have used, produced, or exported cluster munitions, but it is reported to stockpile the weapons.

Policy

The People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria has not yet acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Algeria has expressed opposition to cluster munitions, but it has not articulated its views on accession to the ban convention since 2009, when a government official told the Monitor that Algeria had decided not to sign the convention “at the present time” after various relevant authorities conducted a study that considered the internal situation in Algeria, its long borders, and the positions of neighboring countries.[1]

Algeria has expressed a preference for cluster munitions to be addressed within the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), which it acceded to on 6 May 2015.[2] Algeria has not indicated if its policy on cluster munitions will be reviewed following the 2011 failure by states to conclude a CCW protocol on cluster munitions. This effectively ended the CCW’s deliberations on cluster munitions and has left the Convention on Cluster Munitions as the sole international instrument to specifically address the weapons.

Algeria participated in several meetings of the Oslo Process, but did not attend the Dublin negotiations in May 2008 or the Oslo signing conference in December of that year.[3] At the Vienna conference in December 2007, Algeria described cluster munitions as “evil weapons” requiring urgent action through “a legally binding instrument.”[4]

In 2011, Wikileaks released a United States (US) Department of State cable that showed US officials met with Algeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in February 2008 and urged Algeria not to support any measures “that would interfere with cooperation efforts aimed at non-state parties.”[5]

Algeria last attended an international meeting on cluster munitions in Santiago, Chile in June 2010. Unlike other non-signatories, it has not participated as an observer in the convention’s Meetings of States Parties or in its intersessional meetings held in Geneva since 2011.

Algeria is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Algeria is not known to have used, produced, or exported cluster munitions.

Algeria is reported to stockpile cluster munitions. In 2004, Jane’s Information Group noted that KMG-U dispensers that deploy submunitions were in service for aircraft of the Algerian Air Force.[6] Also according to Jane’s, Algeria possesses Grad 122mm, Uragan 220mm, and Smerch 300mm surface-to-surface rockets, but it is not known if these include versions with submunition payloads.[7]