Five-Year Review: Signatory Angola has regularly expressed its intent to ratify the convention, but stated in June 2015 that it is struggling to do so. Angola has participated in all of the convention’s international meetings and voted in favor of UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions in 2014 and 2015 expressing concern at the use of cluster munitions.

Angola is not known to have produced or exported cluster munitions. Cluster munitions were used in the past in Angola, but it is unclear when or by whom. The government has yet to make an official determination and public announcement confirming that all stocks of cluster munitions have been identified and destroyed.

Policy

The Republic of Angola signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008.

Angola stated in June 2015 that it is “struggling” to ratify Convention on Cluster Munitions because it lacks funds to ensure it can meet the convention’s obligation to clear areas contaminated by cluster munition remnants within 10 years.[1]

Since 2009, Angolan officials have promised that the government will soon ratify the convention, but there has been little measurable progress towards this objective.[2] Previously, in September 2013, Angola stated the ratification process was “already at a very advanced stage” and “being carefully carried out by all actors.”[3] At that time, an official informed the CMC that the ratification package had been prepared for cabinet and then parliamentary approval, repeating what it also stated in 2011.[4]

Angola participated extensively in the Oslo Process and, while it did not attend the formal negotiations in Dublin in May 2008, it signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Oslo in December 2008.[5]

Angola actively engages in the work of the Convention on Cluster Munitions despite not ratifying. It has participated in all of the convention’s Meetings of States Parties, including the Fifth Meeting of States Parties held in San Jose, Costa Rica in September 2014. Angola has attended all intersessional meetings of the convention held in Geneva since 2011.[6] It has participated in regional workshops on the convention, most recently in New York on 16 April 2015.

As a non-permanent member of the UNSC, Angola voted on 29 June 2015 for a Security Council resolution that expressed concern at evidence of cluster munition use in Darfur and called on the government of Sudan to “immediately investigate the use of cluster munitions.”[7] On 27 May 2014, Angola voted for a UNSC resolution on South Sudan that notes “with serious concern” reports of the “indiscriminate use of cluster munitions” and calls on “all parties to refrain from similar such use in the future."[8]

Angola is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is not party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Production, transfer, and use

Angola is not known to have produced or exported cluster munitions.

Cluster munitions were used in the past in Angola, but it is unclear when or by whom. An Intersectoral Commission on Demining and Humanitarian Assistance (Comissão Nacional Intersectorial de Desminagem e Assistência Humanitária, CNIDAH) official who had seen cluster munitions remnants in Huambo province near Caala and Bailundo, probably from the heavy fighting during 1998–1999, said he believed that the Angolan Armed Forces used cluster munitions because only they used aircraft during this conflict, unlike the rebel UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) forces.[9]

Stockpiling and destruction

The government has not made an official determination and public announcement that all stocks have been identified and destroyed.

In June 2010, a CNIDAH official said that Angola had destroyed its stockpile of cluster munitions between 2003 and 2010 in a joint initiative of the government and HALO Trust, and that the armed forces no longer held any stocks.[10] In addition, HALO’s weapons and ammunition disposal teams, which operate in all 18 provinces destroying weapons caches belonging to the police, army, navy, and air force, found and destroyed 51 abandoned explosive submunitions in military warehouses.[11] The location of these warehouses has not been reported.

Deminers operating in Angola have documented the presence of casings of RBK 250-275 cluster bombs among abandoned ammunition.[12] It is likely the KMGU and RBK were of Soviet origin.[13]

Angola is also reported to possess BM-21 Grad and RM-70 122mm surface-to-surface rocket launchers, but it is not known if these include ammunition with submunition payloads.[14]