Five-Year Summary: Non-signatory Kazakhstan acknowledges the humanitarian rationale for the convention, but is not considering accession at this time. It has participated in some of the convention’s meetings. Kazakhstan has stated that it does not produce cluster munitions. It is not known to have used or exported cluster munitions, but inherited a stockpile from the Soviet Union.

Policy

The Republic of Kazakhstan has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Kazakhstan last commented on the convention in an April 2013 letter to the Monitor, which repeated a statement articulated in previous letters sent in 2010, 2011, and 2012 that “Kazakhstan highly values the humanitarian focus of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, but at this stage does not consider its possible accession to the Convention.”[1]  In all its correspondence with the Monitor, Kazakhstan has stated, “We proceed from the point that cluster munitions as weapons are not prohibited under international humanitarian law. Each State shall determine on the feasibility and timing of accession according to the interests of national security and their own economic potential.”[2]

Kazakhstan participated in meetings of the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions, including the negotiations in Dublin in May 2008 as an observer, but made no statements.[3]

Kazakhstan attended intersessional meetings of the convention in Geneva in April 2012 and April 2013, but did not make any statements. This was its first participation in a meeting of the convention since 2008. It has not participated in any of the convention’s Meetings of State Parties.

Kazakhstan is not party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Kazakhstan is not known to have used or exported cluster munitions. Kazakhstan has stated that it does not “produce and does not intend to produce and acquire cluster munitions in the medium term.”[4] Kazakhstan has also stated that it “cannot be a source of proliferation of cluster munitions” because it has “an effective system of export control of arms.”[5]

Kazakhstan inherited a stockpile of cluster munitions from the Soviet Union, but has not made a public declaration regarding the types and quantities of the cluster munitions stockpiled. According to Jane’s Information Group, RBK-500 series cluster bombs are in service with the country’s air force.[6] Kazakhstan also possesses Grad 122mm and Uragan 220mm surface-to-surface rockets, but it is not known if these include versions with submunition payloads.[7]

Kazakhstan ordered a total of 50 Extra surface-to-surface missiles for its Lynx-type launchers from Israel in 2007, and received them in 2008–2009.[8] According to the product information sheet available from its manufacturer, the Extra missile can have either a unitary or submunition warhead.[9] It is not known which variant Kazakhstan acquired.