Policy

The Sultanate of Oman acceded to the Mine Ban Treaty on 20 August 2014 and the treaty entered into force on 1 February 2015, making it the 162^nd State Party.

Oman’s initial transparency measures report for the Mine Ban Treaty was submitted in August 2015. The report states that Oman has directed the legislative authority to create legislation which criminalizes any violation of the treaty and established a permanent committee for the implementation of the treaty at the office of the Army chief of staff.[1]

Oman participated in the Ottawa Process leading to the Mine Ban Treaty and has remained sporadically engaged.[2] The ICBL had engaged with Oman on the Mine Ban Treaty for years, with visits to Muscat by its diplomatic adviser in 2012 and other representatives in 2007. In March 2014, Oman’s foreign affairs minister, Youssef bin Alawi bin Abdullah, informed the Mine Ban Treaty envoy, Princess Astrid of Belgium, of the government’s decision to join the Mine Ban Treaty.

Oman’s Ambassador Lyutha Sultan Al-Mughairy deposited the accession instrument at the UN in New York on 20 August 2014. In a statement, she said the move “demonstrates that all States from all parts of the world have a role to play in ending the suffering caused by these insidious weapons.”[3]

With Oman’s accession, half of the Gulf Coordination Council (GCC) members are now party to the treaty, while Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have not joined.

Oman participated as an observer at the Mine Ban Treaty’s First Review Conference in Nairobi in 2004 and the Third Review Conference in Maputo, Mozambique in June 2014. It has attended most of the treaty’s Meetings of States Parties, including the Thirteenth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in December 2013. Oman has also participated in many of the treaty’s intersessional Standing Committee meetings in Geneva, but did not attend those held in June 2015.

Oman is not a party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions or the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Oman is obligated to destroy its stockpile of antipersonnel mines as soon as possible and no later than 1 February 2019.

In its initial Article 7 transparency report, Oman declared a stockpile of 17,260 antipersonnel mines of Belgian, British, and German manufacture.[4] It has stated its intention to retain 2,000 antipersonnel mines and has established an implementation unit to organize stockpile destruction and clearance.[5] Oman noted in its initial Article 7 report that while it possessed an operational stock of claymore mines they were limited to command detonation mode.[6]

Oman officials previously stated that Oman had never produced or exported antipersonnel mines, while it had imported and used them in the past.[7]

Previously, an Omani official informed the Monitor in 2007 that the country’s stockpile consists of fewer than 2,000 antipersonnel mines, and that there had been no new procurement of mines in more than 20 years.[8] Officials have stated on several occasions that Oman now only possesses antipersonnel mines for training purposes.[9]