Five-Year Review: Non-signatory Venezuela adopted the convention in 2008, but since then has not commented publicly on its position on accession. It has participated in one meeting of the convention, in 2011. Venezuela is not known to have used, produced, or exported cluster munitions. It was not known to have imported or stockpiled cluster munitions until August 2011 when the government announced the destruction of an unspecified quantity of cluster munitions.

Policy

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has not yet acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Venezuela’s representatives generally do not address the question of whether the country will accede to the convention and last made a public statement on the convention in May 2008 (see below). Venezuela last made a general statement on cluster munitions in November 2011 during the failed Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) negotiations on cluster munitions, when its representative said Venezuela “fully supports unstintingly all efforts to address the humanitarian issue of the use of cluster munitions against civilian populations,” and noted “a binding tool leading us to a prohibition of the use, stockpiling, [and] transfer…would be the ideal” but “we are far from achieving it.”[1]

Venezuela participated in several meetings of the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions, but when it joined in the consensus adoption of the convention text in Dublin on 30 May 2008, it expressed opposition to the convention’s Article 21 provisions on “interoperability” (relations with states not party), which it said “[undermines] the spirit and purpose” of the convention.[2]

Venezuela has participated in just one meeting of the Convention on Cluster Munitions: the Second Meeting of States Parties in Beirut, Lebanon in September 2011, which it attended as an observer. Venezuela was invited to, but did not attend the convention’s Fifth Meeting of States Parties in San Jose, Costa Rica in September 2014.

Venezuela has not expressed its view on recent civilian harm from the use of cluster munitions in Syria, which has been widely condemned. Government media outlets have however covered the use of cluster munitions in Syria and elsewhere in 2014 and 2015.[3]

Venezuela is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is also party to the CCW.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

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

Venezuela was not known to have imported or stockpiled cluster munitions until an August 2011 statement by the Ministry of the Popular Power for the Defense of Venezuela announcing the destruction of an unspecified number of cluster munitions belonging to the Air Force of Venezuela.[4] A Ministry of Defense spokesperson said the ordnance destroyed included Israeli-made AS TAL-1 cluster bombs acquired for use with F-16A fighter aircraft. According to the statement, the stockpile destruction was undertaken at Fort Caribbean in El Pao, Cojedes as part of “Operation Bachaco” to destroy surplus ammunition and ordnance.

It is not clear if Venezuela has other stockpiles of TAL-1 cluster bombs or other cluster munitions. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has reported that Israel exported the LAR-160 surface-to-surface rocket system to Venezuela, but it is not known if ammunition containing submunitions was included in the deal.[5]