Five-Year Review: Signatory Iceland’s deposit of its ratification instrument with the UN was imminent when Cluster Munition Monitor 2015 went to print. Iceland enacted implementing legislation in July 2015 that also approved its ratification of the convention. Iceland states that it has never used, produced, transferred, or stockpiled cluster munitions.

Policy

The Republic of Iceland signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008.

As of 27 July 2015, Iceland had completed the domestic process of ratification and all that remained was the final step of depositing the ratification instrument with the UN in New York.

Iceland’s parliament (Althingi) adopted ratification legislation, which also serves as its implementing legislation for the convention, on 30 June 2015 that was then signed into law on 10 July 2015. Law 83 imposes penal sanctions of between six months and four years’ imprisonment as well as fines for violations of its ban on the use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions. The legislation does not explicitly address the question of assistance with those activities. Law 83 applies to both individuals and companies, and it covers actions committed outside its borders by Icelandic citizens and legal entities.[1]

Iceland engaged in the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions.[2] Iceland attended a conference on the destruction of cluster munitions in Berlin in June 2009.

Iceland participated in the convention’s Third Meeting of States Parties in Oslo, Norway in September 2012. This was its first and to date only attendance at a meeting of the convention.

On 23 March 2015, Iceland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson, introduced the “Bill on the implementation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions” into the Icelandic parliament.[3] After its first reading, on 30 April 2015, the Bill was referred to the Foreign Affairs Committee for consideration. Four local NGOs made submissions to the committee by a deadline of 15 May 2015, all in support of the draft legislation and proposed ratification: Amnesty International-Iceland, Human Rights Centre, Iceland Women’s Culture and Peace Organization, and the Civilians Against War (Hernaðarandstæðinga) Association.[4]

The committee considered the draft legislation at five meetings between 5 May and 9 June 2015, when its nine members recommended by consensus that the Bill be adopted unchanged. The committee’s report noted that five years had passed since the convention’s entry into force and said that “the emphasis is ratification by Iceland as soon as possible.” [5]

The Bill was read a second time on 29 June and then a third and final time on 30 June 2015, when it was adopted by a vote of 51 in favor and none against.[6] President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson signed the Bill on 10 July 2015 and it was then published in the Official Journal on 22 July 2015.[7]

Icelandic officials have responded regularly to CMC and Monitor inquiries on the status of its ratification of the convention.[8]

Iceland voted in favor of UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 69/189 on 18 December 2014, which expressed “outrage” at the continued use of cluster munitions in Syria.[9]

On interpretive issues relating to the convention, Iceland has made a strong statement on “interoperability” and the prohibition on assistance. Iceland has stated that Article 21 (on relations with states not party) should not be seen as undercutting the obligation in Article 1 not to assist with any activity prohibited by the convention, even during joint military operations with states not party to the convention.[10]

Iceland has not elaborated its views on other important issues relating to the interpretation and implementation of the convention, such as the prohibition on transit, the prohibition on investment in the production of cluster munitions, or the prohibition on foreign stockpiling of cluster munitions. In 2013, a Ministry for Foreign Affairs official said that Iceland would state its views on these interpretive issues once it has ratified.[11] The implementation law is silent on these issues.

Iceland is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is also party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons. Iceland was the first Arms Trade Treaty signatory to ratify on 2 July 2013.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Iceland has stated that it has never stockpiled, used, produced, or transferred cluster munitions.[12]

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Iceland does not possess any cluster munitions.[13]