Five-Year Review: State Party Antigua and Barbuda ratified the convention on 23 August 2010. It provided an initial transparency report for the convention in 2012 that indicated it planned to incorporate the convention’s provisions into domestic law. Antigua and Barbuda has participated in several meetings of the convention and has confirmed it has not used, produced, transferred, or stockpiled cluster munitions.

Policy

Antigua and Barbuda signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 16 July 2010 and ratified on 23 August 2010. The convention entered into force for Antigua and Barbuda on 1 February 2011, making it the first State Party from the Caribbean.

Antigua and Barbuda is not believed to have enacted any legislative measures to enforce its implementation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It has reported that the incorporation of the convention into domestic law is “still pending.”[1]

Antigua and Barbuda submitted its initial Article 7 transparency report for the convention on 15 October 2012 and provided an annual updated report on 21 August 2014.[2] As of 12 May 2015, Antigua and Barbuda had not submitted the annual update due by 30 April 2015.

Antigua and Barbuda did not participate in the Oslo Process that created the convention, but officials indicated the government’s intent to join several times in 2009 and 2010.[3]

Antigua and Barbuda first attended a meeting of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in November 2010, when it participated in the First Meeting of States Parties in Vientiane, Lao PDR. It also participated in the convention’s Fourth Meeting of States Parties in Lusaka, Zambia in September 2013 and the Fifth Meeting of States Parties in San Jose, Costa Rica in September 2014, but did not make statements at either meeting.

Antigua and Barbuda has attended the convention’s intersessional meetings in Geneva once, in April 2013. Antigua and Barbuda also participated in a regional workshop on cluster munitions in Santiago, Chile in December 2013. Antigua and Barbuda has not yet condemned the use of cluster munitions in Syria, which has been reported since 2012.

Antigua and Barbuda has not yet articulated its views on important issues relating to the convention’s interpretation and implementation such as 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, the prohibition on investment in production of cluster munitions, and the need for retention of cluster munitions and submunitions for training and development purposes.

Antigua and Barbuda is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is also party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Antigua and Barbuda has reported “N/A” for not applicable on both its Article 7 report forms on production and stockpiling, thereby confirming that it has not used, produced, transferred, or stockpiled cluster munitions.[4]