Five-Year Review: Non-signatory Argentina adopted the convention in 2008 and acknowledges its humanitarian rationale, but it has not undertaken any process to accede and officials rarely comment on the government’s position on accession. Despite the lack of accession, Argentina has participated in almost all of the convention’s meetings and expressed concern over or condemned new use of cluster munitions in Syria and Ukraine.

Argentina imported cluster munitions in the past, but states it has never used or exported the weapons. Argentina states it has no intention to produce cluster munitions in the future and it destroyed its stocks of cluster munitions before the convention was adopted.

Policy

The Republic of Argentina has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Argentine officials did not make any official comments on the government’s position on accession to the convention in 2014 or the first half of 2015. During a regional workshop on cluster munitions in Santiago, Chile in December 2013, a representative from Argentina said there has been no change since 2008 in the government’s position on joining.[1] Previously, in 2010, Argentine officials said the government is “firmly opposed” to the use, transfer, and production of cluster munitions.[2]

Argentina actively participated in the Oslo Process and joined in the consensus adoption of the Convention on Cluster Munitions at the conclusion of the negotiations in Dublin on 30 May 2008, but was absent from the Oslo Signing Conference in December 2008.[3]

Officials cite two provisions in the convention that Argentina objected to during the negotiations as among the reasons for its reluctance to join. The first objection is the convention’s definition and what is covered by the ban on cluster munitions.[4] At the beginning of the Oslo Process, Argentina supported technical solutions to the cluster munition problem, noting that it was developing a new generation of cluster munitions with low failure rates.[5] It supported a definition that would exempt cluster munitions with submunitions that have self-destruct mechanisms.[6] This position evolved into support of a broad definition prohibiting all cluster munitions and a total ban without exceptions.[7]

Argentina’s second objection is Article 21 of the convention, which was designed to facilitate “interoperability” (joint military operations with states not party). It views this provision as a potential loophole allowing for cluster munition use.[8]

Argentina engages in the Convention on Cluster Munitions despite its lack of accession. It has participated as an observer in all of the convention’s Meetings of States Parties, including the Fifth Meeting of States Parties in San Jose, Costa Rica in September 2014, but did not make any statements at these meetings. Argentina has participated in every intersessional meeting of the convention in Geneva, except those held in June 2015. It has not made any statements since the first intersessional meetings in 2011. Argentina has attended regional workshops on the convention, most recently in Santiago, Chile in December 2013.

During an UN Security Council debate on 24 October 2014, Argentina—in its capacity as president of the Security Council for the month of October 2014—expressed concern at the use of cluster munitions in Ukraine, stating, “we are naturally deeply perturbed by the reports of the use of cluster bombs in densely populated areas.”[9]

Argentina has voted in favor of UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions condemning the use of cluster munitions in Syria, including Resolution 69/189 on 18 December 2014, which expressed “outrage” at the continued use.[10] Argentina 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.[11]

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

Local NGO Association for Public Policy (Asociación Para Politicas Publicas, APP) campaigns for Argentina’s accession to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Argentina is not known to have ever used or exported cluster munitions, and does not currently produce or stockpile them. In the past, it imported and stockpiled cluster munitions, and had the beginnings of a production program.

In 2009, Argentina stated that, “the Republic of Argentina doesn’t have cluster munitions, it hasn’t utilized or transferred them.”[12] The government has said it has no intention to produce cluster munitions in the future.[13]

In the past, the Armed Forces Center for Technical and Scientific Research (Centro de Investigaciones Técnicas y Científicas de las Fuerzas Armadas, CITEFA) developed and initiated production of the CME 155mm artillery projectile, which contains 63 dual-purpose improved conventional munition (DPICM) submunitions equipped with a backup pyrotechnic self-destruct mechanism.[14] According to military officials, this effort did not reach full-scale production and was dismantled, and the projectiles were never fielded by the armed forces of Argentina.[15]

In May 2007, Argentina stated that it had already destroyed its stocks of cluster munitions.[16] Military officials informed Human Rights Watch (HRW) in September 2006 that stocks of French BLG-66 Belouga and US Rockeye air-dropped bombs were destroyed by 2005.[17]