Honduras
Cluster Munition Ban Policy
Five-Year Review: State Party Honduras ratified the convention on 21 March 2012 and has participated in most of the convention’s meetings. In 2007, Honduras stated that it no longer possessed a stockpile ofcluster munitions, but it has not delivered the initial transparency report required by the convention to formally confirm no stocks. Honduras is not known to have used or produced cluster munitions.
Policy
The Republic of Honduras signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008, ratified on 21 March 2012, and the convention entered into force for Honduras on 1 September 2012.
It is not known if specific implementing legislation will be undertaken for the convention.[1]
As of 17 June 2015, Honduras had not submitted its initial Article 7 transparency report for the Convention on Cluster Munitions, originally due by 28 February 2013.
Honduras played an active role in the Oslo Process that created the convention.[2]
Honduras has participated in three of the convention’s Meetings of States Parties, including the Fifth Meeting of States Parties in San Jose, Costa Rica in September 2014.[3] It attended intersessional meetings of the convention in Geneva in 2011 and 2013. Honduras has participated in a regional workshop on the convention, most recently in Santiago, Chile in December 2013.
Honduras 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.[4]
Honduras is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is also party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.
Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling
Honduras is not known to have used or produced cluster munitions.
In December 2007, Honduras declared thatitdoes not possess cluster munitions.[5] According to officials, the stockpile of air-dropped Rockeye cluster bombs and an unidentified type of artillery-delivered cluster munitions were destroyed before 2007.[6] According to United States (US) export records, Honduras imported 120 Rockeye cluster bombs at some point between 1970 and 1995.[7]
[1] In October 2004, Congress passed the Law on Firearms, Munitions, Explosives and other Similar Objects Control (Decree 30-2000). See ICBL, Landmine Monitor Report 2004: Toward a Mine-Free World (New York: Human Rights Watch, August 2004), p. 487. In 2010, an official indicated that some aspects of the convention may already be covered by existing legislation, such as the 2004 decree on firearms and explosives. Telephone interview with Ivon Bonilla, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 10 March 2010. In June 2000, Honduras adopted Decree No. 60-2000 to enforce its implementation of the Mine Ban Treaty.
[2] For more information on Honduras’ policy and practice regarding cluster munitions through early 2009, see Human Rights Watch and Landmine Action, Banning Cluster Munitions: Government Policy and Practice (Ottawa: Mines Action Canada, May 2009), p. 89.
[3] See “Honduras libre de bombas de racimo,” El Heraldo, 2 September 2014. Honduras did not attend the convention’s First Meeting of States Parties in Vientiane, Lao PDR in November 2010 or the Third Meeting of States Parties in Oslo, Norway in September 2012.
[4] “Situation of human rights in the Syrian Arab Republic,” UNGA Resolution 69/189, 18 December 2014. Honduras voted in favor of a similar resolution on 15 May and 18 December 2013.
[5] Statement of Honduras, Vienna Conference on Cluster Munitions, 5 December 2007. Notes by the CMC/Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).
[6] Human Rights Watch (HRW) meetings with Honduran officials, San José, 5 September 2007, and Vienna, 3–5 December 2007.
[7] US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, Department of Defense, “Cluster Bomb Exports under FMS, FY1970–FY1995,” obtained by HRW in a Freedom of Information Act request, 28 November 1995.