Five-Year Review: Non-signatory Georgia last commented on the convention in 2010, when it stated it could not consider acceding until the security environment in the region improves. Georgia has attended a couple of meetings of the convention, but never made any statements.

Georgia imported cluster munition rockets from Israel in 2007, which it has acknowledged using a year later during its conflict with Russia over South Ossetia. It also inherited stocks of cluster munitions from the Soviet Union and in 2013, destroyed a stockpile of 844 RBK-series cluster bombs containing over 320,000 submunitions.Georgia is not known to have produced or exported cluster munitions.

Policy

Georgia has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Georgia last elaborated its views on the convention in an April 2010 letter that expressed support for “the spirit of the Mine Ban Treaty and the Cluster Munitions Convention” but stated “the bitter reality on the ground with reference to the security situation in the region didn’t allow us to adjoin the mentioned conventions. Unfortunately the situation has not changed much and has even worsened security-wise that does not leave us any option other than to stay reluctant to join the conventions until the credible changes occur in the security environment of the region.”[1]

Georgia participated in some meetings of the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions.[2]

Since 2008, Georgia has attended two meetings related to the convention: an international conference on the convention in Santiago, Chile in June 2010 and the convention’s Third Meeting of States Parties in Oslo, Norway in September 2012. It did not make any statements at these meetings.

Georgia 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.[3]

Georgia has not joined the Mine Ban Treaty. It is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Use, production, transfer

Georgia is not known to have produced or exported cluster munitions.

Georgia acquired Mk-4 160mm surface-to-surface rockets equipped with cluster munition payloads (each rocket contains 104 M85 submunitions) from Israel in 2007.[4] Georgian forces used these weapons during the conflict with Russia in August 2008; the Ministry of Defense said Georgia launched 24 volleys of 13 Mk-4 rockets each.[5]

On 31 August 2008, the Ministry of Defense acknowledged that the Georgian Armed Forces used cluster munitions against the Russian forces near the Roki tunnel.[6] Remnants of Georgian cluster munitions were also found by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in civilian areas in the north of Gori district, south of the South Ossetian administrative border.[7]

Stockpiling and destruction

Georgia inherited a stockpile of air-dropped cluster bombs from the Soviet Union.[8] A total of 844 RBK-series cluster bombs and 320,375 submunitions were destroyed in 2013 as part of a project to destroy obsolete weapons that began in July 2011 with the support of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the UNDP.[9] The last RBK-series bombs were destroyed by open detonation at the Vaziani military firing range, 20 kilometers outside of Tbilisi, on 12 July 2013.

Cluster munitions destroyed in Georgia[10]