Guinea

Cluster Munition Ban Policy

Last updated: 04 September 2020

Ten-Year Review: State Party Guinea ratified the convention on 21 October 2014 and has participated in some of the convention’s meetings, but not since 2016.

Guinea is not known to have ever used, produced, or exported cluster munitions, but it is believed to stockpile them. Guinea must provide an initial transparency report for the convention to formally indicate if it possesses a stockpile and, if so, disclose information on the types and quantities to be destroyed.

Policy

The Republic of Guinea signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008, ratified on 21 October 2014, and the convention entered into force for the country on 1 April 2015.

Guinea has not indicated if it plans to enact national implementation legislation for the convention.

As of August 2020, Guinea had not submitted its initial Article 7 transparency report for the convention, which was originally due by 30 September 2015. Timely submission of the report is a legal obligation, but Guinea has not indicated when it will provide it.

Guinea participated in the Oslo Process that created the convention, including the Dublin negotiations in May 2008, where it joined in the consensus adoption of the convention.[1]

Guinea has attended some meetings of the convention, including the First Review Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia in September 2015.[2] It was invited to, but did not attend, the convention’s Ninth Meeting of States Parties in September 2019.

Guinea was absent from the vote on a UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution urging universalization and implementation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in December 2019.[3] Previously, in 2015–2018, Guinea voted in favor of the annual UNGA resolution promoting the convention.

Guinea has not elaborated its views on certain important issues relating to its interpretation and implementation of the convention, including the prohibition on assistance, transit, foreign stockpiling, and investment in production of cluster munitions.

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

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

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

Guinea imported cluster munitions and is believed to currently possess a stockpile. Moldova has reported that it transferred 860 9M27K cluster munition rockets, each containing 30 fragmentation submunitions, to Guinea in the year 2000 for use in its 220mm Uragan multi-barrel rocket launchers.[4]

Guinea must provide an transparency report, for the convention to confirm if it possesses cluster munition stocks. If it does, Guinea is obligated to ensure their destruction as soon as possible and no later than 1 April 2023.

Guinea has not indicated if it intends to retain cluster munitions for research and training purposes.



[1] For details on Guinea’s cluster munition policy and practice up to early 2009, see Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Landmine Action, Banning Cluster Munitions: Government Policy and Practice (Ottawa: Mines Action Canada, May 2009), p. 86.

[2] Guinea attended the convention’s Meetings of States Parties in 2010–2011, and 2016.

[3]Implementation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions,” UNGA Resolution 74/62, 12 December 2019.

[4] Submission of the Republic of Moldova, UN Register of Conventional Arms, Report for Calendar Year 2000, 30 May 2001.