Five-Year Review: Non-signatory Bahrain has expressed support for the ban on cluster munitions and its interest in joining the convention, but it has not taken any steps towards accession or attended any meetings of the convention. Bahrain is not known to have used, produced, or exported cluster munitions, but has a stockpile imported from the United States.

Policy

The Kingdom of Bahrain has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Bahrain has expressed support for a ban on cluster munitions and indicated its interest in joining the convention, but no steps have been taken towards accession.

Bahrain last commented on the matter in January 2011, when a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said that “different ministries” were studying the convention and the Mine Ban Treaty, including Bahrain’s position on joining, and taking into consideration “the regional and international situation and positions of other states in the region.”[1] In 2009, a government minister described the convention as necessary “to avoid further civilian casualties from these weapons” and said that authorities in Bahrain were studying the possibility of joining.[2]

During the Wellington Conference on Cluster Munitions in February 2008, Bahrain called upon states “to stop using such weapons, and should consider such use as a crime against humanity” and stated it “strongly supports all efforts to eliminate all kinds of cluster munitions, and to prohibit their use, transfer, trade and stockpiling.”[3]

Bahrain participated in a couple of meetings of the Oslo Process that created the convention and joined in the consensus adoption of the convention in Dublin in May 2008, but did not attend the signing conference in Oslo in December 2008.[4]

Bahrain has not participated in any meetings of the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Bahrain has voted in favor of UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions condemning the use of cluster munitions in Syria, including Resolution 69/189 on 18 December 2014, which expressed “outrage” at the continued use.[5]

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

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Bahrain is not known to have used, produced, or exported cluster munitions, but has a sizeable stockpile imported from the United States (US).

Between 1995 and 2001, the US transferred 30,000 artillery projectiles (M509A1, M449A1, and M483) containing 5.06 million dual-purpose improved conventional munition (DPICM) submunitions to Bahrain as the weapon was phased out of the US inventory.[6]

The US has also provided M26 rockets and ATACMS-1A missiles with more than 1 million submunitions to Bahrain for its multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) launchers. Bahrain purchased 151 M26A1 MLRS extended range rocket pods (six missiles per pod, 644 submunitions per rocket) in 1996, 55 rocket pods in 1997, and 57 rocket pods in 2003.[7] In 2000, the US sold Bahrain 30 M39 ATACMS-1A missiles, each with 950 M74 submunitions.[8]

Additionally Jane’s Information Group lists Bahrain as possessing the Hydra-70 air-to-surface unguided rocket system, but it is not known if this stockpile includes the M261 multipurpose submunition variant.[9]

Bahrain is participating in a Saudi Arabia-led coalition of states that began attacking Ansar Allah (the Houthi) in Yemen on 25 March 2015, in a conflict that was continuing as of 20 July 2015.[10] US cluster munitions have been used in airstrikes by coalition forces, but the state responsible for the use has not been identified.[11] The cluster munition attacks in Yemen have been condemned by a number of states, the president of the convention’s Fifth Meeting of States Parties, the CMC, and others.[12]