Mongolia
Cluster Munition Ban Policy
Summary: Non-signatory Mongolia has expressed support for the ban on cluster munitions but has not taken any steps to join the convention. Mongolia has participated in meetings of the convention and attended a regional workshop in June 2019. Mongolia voted in favor of a key United Nations (UN) resolution promoting the convention in December 2018.
Mongolia is not known to have used, produced, or exported cluster munitions. In 2014, Mongolia informed the Monitor that it does not have any stocks of the weapons.
Policy
Mongolia has not taken steps to accede to the convention but government officials have expressed interest in doing so. In 2013, Mongolia told States Parties that the convention prohibits “one of the most inhumane weapons of today” and said that “the only guarantee against the risk of the use and proliferation of these weapons is their total elimination.” [1]
Mongolia did not participate in the 2007–2008 Oslo Process that created the convention. Mongolia first participated in a meeting related to the convention in November 2009, when it attended a regional workshop on cluster munitions in Bali, Indonesia.
Mongolia has participated as an observer in the convention’s Meetings of States Parties, but not since 2014. [2] It attended an Asia-Pacific workshop on the convention in Manila, Philippines on 18–19 June 2019. [3]
In December 2018, Mongolia voted in favor of a UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution, which urges states outside the Convention on Cluster Munitions to “join as soon as possible.” [4] Mongolia voted in favor of the annual resolution promoting the convention since it was first introduced in 2015.
Mongolia is not party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.
Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling
Mongolia is not known to have used, produced, or exported cluster munitions.
In September 2014, a representative of Mongolia’s armed forces informed the Monitor that Mongolia possesses no stockpiles of cluster munitions. [5]
Jane’s Information Group reported in 2004 that the country’s air force had KMGU dispensers that deliver submunitions. [6] Mongolia possesses Grad 122mm surface-to-surface launchers, but it is not known if these include rockets with submunition payloads. [7]
[1] Statement of Mongolia, Convention on Cluster Munitions Fourth Meeting of States Parties, Lusaka, 10 September 2013. Also in September 2013, Mongolian President Elbegdorj Tsakhia praised “the indispensable role of coalitions of states and of NGOs, when the disarmament machinery fails, as exemplified by the successful conclusion of the landmines convention in 1997 and of the cluster munitions convention in 2008.” Statement by President Elbegdorj Tsakhia of Mongolia, High-Level Meeting of the UNGA on Nuclear Disarmament, New York, 26 September 2013.
[2] Mongolia participated as an observer in the convention’s Meetings of States Parties in 2010, 2013, and 2014, but did not attend the First Review Conference in 2015 or any meetings since then.
[3] “Asia-Pacific Workshop on CCM Universalization,” Convention on Cluster Munitions Quarterly Newsletter, April 2019.
[4] “Implementation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions,” UNGA Resolution 73/54, 5 December 2018.
[5] Monitor interview with Col. Badarch Khadbaatar, Chief of Military Weaponry, General Staff of the Armed Forces of Mongolia, in San Jose, 2 September 2014. The Monitor has listed Mongolia as a stockpiler since publication of the first Cluster Munition Monitor Report in 2010 and will continue to do so until Mongolia provides a written statement that it does not stockpile cluster munitions.
[6] Robert Hewson, ed., Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons, Issue 44 (Surrey, UK: Jane’s Information Group Limited, 2004), p. 842.
[7] International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2011 (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 259.