Five-Year Review: In 2014, signatory Jamaica stated that it was preparing legislation to ratify the convention at the earliest opportunity. It has participated in two Meetings of States Parties. Jamaica is not known to have ever used, produced, or transferred cluster munitions and confirmed in 2012 that it does not possess any stocks.

Policy

Jamaica signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 12 June 2009, becoming the first Caribbean country to join.

In September 2014, Jamaica informed States Parties that “the government is in the process of preparing applicable domestic legislation with a view to acceding to the Convention at its earliest opportunity.”[1] Previously, in 2012, Jamaica informed States Parties that its ratification of the convention was at an “advanced stage.”[2]

Jamaica participated in the Oslo Process and advocated strongly for the most comprehensive convention text possible during the formal negotiations in Dublin in May 2008.[3]

Jamaica attended its first meeting of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in September 2012, when it participated in the Third Meeting of States Parties in Oslo, Norway. It also participated in the convention’s Fifth Meeting of States Parties in San Jose, Costa Rica in September 2014, where it made a general statement.[4] Jamaica has not attended the convention’s intersessional meetings in Geneva. It participated in a regional workshop on cluster munitions in Santiago, Chile in December 2013. Jamaica has voted in favor of UN General Assembly 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]

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

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

In September 2012, a government representative stated that “Jamaica does not possess cluster munitions.”[6] Jamaica is not known to have ever used, produced, or transferred the weapons.