Five-Year Review: State Party Sierra Leone was one of the first of 30 ratifications that triggered entry into force of the convention on 1 August 2010. It has expressed its intent to enact national implementing legislation for the convention. Sierra Leone has participated in most of the convention’s meetings and has condemned new use of cluster munitions. Sierra Leone states that it has never used, produced, stockpiled, or transferred cluster munitions. Cluster munitions were used in Sierra Leone in 1997.

Policy

The Republic of Sierra Leone signed and ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Oslo on 3 December 2008. It was among the first 30 ratifications that triggered entry into force of the convention on 1 August 2010.

Sierra Leone has expressed its intent to enact national implementing legislation for the convention, but the current status of this process was not known as of July 2015.[1] In 2011, Sierra Leone announced that it was working to adopt national legislation “prohibiting future possession, purchase, and use of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.”[2] In May 2013, an official said that implementing legislation had been drafted using model legislation provided by the ICRC.[3]

Sierra Leone submitted its initial Article 7 transparency report for the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 25 January 2011. As of 7 July 2015, it had not provided any of the updated reports required by 30 April each year.[4]

Sierra Leone participated in the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions and advocated for a strong convention text during the formal negotiations in Dublin in May 2008.[5]

Sierra Leone works in support of the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It has participated in three of the convention’s Meetings of States Parties (2010, 2011, and 2013), but did not attend the Fifth Meeting of States Parties in San Jose, Costa Rica in September 2014. It has not attended the intersessional meetings of the convention held in Geneva since 2011. Sierra Leone has participated in regional workshops on the convention, such as the one held in Lomé, Togo in May 2013.

In May 2013, Sierra Leone said it was “deeply concerned that Cluster Munitions continue to be used by some countries that are not party to the Convention, causing untold suffering to innocent civilians” and condemned “in the strongest terms the previous, recent and any further use” of cluster munitions.[6]

Sierra Leone voted in favor of four Human Rights Council resolutions in 2014 and 2015 that condemned the use of cluster munitions in Syria, most recently on 2 July 2015.[7] It has voted in favor of UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions condemning the use of cluster munitions in Syria, most recently Resolution 69/189 on 18 December 2014, which expressed “outrage” at the continued use.[8]

Sierra Leone has not yet elaborated its views on certain important issues relating to interpretation and implementation of the convention, including the prohibition on transit, the prohibition on assistance during joint military operations with states not party that may use cluster munitions, the prohibition on foreign stockpiling of cluster munitions, and the prohibition on investment in production of cluster munitions.

Sierra Leone is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is also party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Sierra Leone has stated several times that it has never used, produced, stockpiled, or transferred cluster munitions.[9]

Sierra Leone has reported that cluster munitions were stockpiled in the country during the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) intervention in 1998 and 1999.[10] According to sources close to the Sierra Leonean military, in 1997 Nigerian forces operating as ECOMOG peacekeepers dropped two cluster bombs on Lokosama, near Port Loko. ECOMOG Force Commander General Victor Malu denied these reports.[11] According to media reports, Nigerian ECOMOG peacekeepers used French-produced BLG-66 Belouga cluster bombs in an attack on the eastern town of Kenema in Sierra Leone in 1997.[12]

In May 2012, Sierra Leone reaffirmed these allegations of cluster munition use.[13] In September 2012, Nigeria again denied the cluster munition use.[14]

Sierra Leone has reported that an unknown quantity of M42, M46, and M77 submunitions were destroyed by open detonation in 2001 at Aberdeen Beach near Freetown by an explosive ordnance disposal team from the United Kingdom.[15]