Five-Year Review: Signatory Cyprus has expressed its intent to ratify the convention and its parliament has been debating ratification since 2011. Cyprus has participated in several meetings of the convention, most recently in 2013. Cyprus states that it has never used, produced, or transferred cluster munitions, but it is believed to stockpile them.

Policy

The Republic of Cyprus signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 23 September 2009.

Draft ratification legislation for the convention was introduced in the House of Representatives in 2011, where it remains, as of 15 July 2015.[1] In a May 2015 letter, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed the Monitor that Cyprus “assesses very positively the prospect of ratifying” the convention, but said however, the ratification process is still ongoing “due to parliamentary considerations related to the fact that Turkey, whose occupation forces have been stationed illegally on Cyprus since 1974, has not yet joined the convention.”[2] 

Previously, in April 2014, a Cypriot representative informed the CMC that the ratification process had been put on hold for three years because of the country’s financial situation and International Monetary Fund (IMF) restrictions that inhibit Cyprus from spending funds to meet its anticipated stockpile destruction obligations.[3]

Since 2011, various government officials have communicated with the Monitor and the CMC about the ratification process.[4]

Cyprus participated in one international conference of the Oslo Process to develop the convention text (Vienna in December 2007), but attended the formal negotiations of the convention in Dublin in May 2008 and the Convention on Cluster Munitions Signing Conference in Oslo in December 2008 only as an observer. Cyprus signed the convention at the UN in New York in September 2009, becoming the 100^th signatory to the convention.

Cyprus has participated in two of the convention’s Meetings of States Parties (2011 and 2012) and attended intersessional meetings of the convention in Geneva in 2012 and 2013.

Cyprus 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.[5]

Cyprus has not elaborated its views on several important issues for the implementation and interpretation of the convention, including the prohibition on transit, the prohibition on assistance during joint military operations with states not party that might use cluster munitions, the prohibition on investment in the production of cluster munitions, or the need for the retention of cluster munitions and submunitions for training and development purposes.

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

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Cyprus has stated that it has never used, produced, or transferred cluster munitions.[6]

Cyprus has not disclosed information on the size or status of its stockpile of cluster munitions or requested technical or financial assistance for its destruction.

Cyprus possesses 122mm BM-21 Grad multiple launch rockets, but it is not known if these weapons have cluster munition warheads.[7] Additionally, Cyprus acquired other systems capable of delivering submunitions, including Zuzana 155mm howitzers imported via Greece from Slovakia in 2007 and M63 Plamen and M77 Oganj multiple-barrel rocket launchers from Yugoslavia in the 1980s.[8]

In 2010, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official asserted that Turkish Armed Forces “have stocked considerable quantities of cluster bombs in the occupied territory of the Republic [of Cyprus].”[9]

Cyprus has not indicated if it will retain any cluster munitions for research or training.