Five-Year Review: Non-signatory Yemen has expressed support for the ban on cluster munitions, but has not taken any steps towards accession. It attended three of the convention’s Meetings of States Parties, most recently in 2014.

Yemen is not known to have produced or exported cluster munitions, but has likely stockpiled cluster munitions at some point. In April and May 2015, a Saudi Arabia-led coalition used United States (US)-made CBU-105 and CBU-87 cluster munitions in air attacks against Ansar Allah (Houthi rebels) in Yemen. Ground-launched ZP-39 submunitions have also been used, but it is unclear who used them. Saudi Arabia and the US also used cluster munitions in attacks inside Yemen in 2009.

Policy

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

Yemen has expressed support for the ban on cluster munitions, but it has not commented on its position on accession to the convention.

Yemen participated in two meetings of the Oslo Process that produced the convention (Lima in May 2007 and Belgrade in October 2007) and expressed its support for work to prohibit cluster munitions.[1] It did not attend the negotiations of the convention in Dublin in May 2008 or the Convention on Cluster Munitions Signing Conference in Oslo in December 2008.[2]

Yemen has participated as an observer in three Meetings of States Parties of the convention, most recently the Fifth Meeting of States Parties in San José, Costa Rica in September 2014.[3] It attended the convention’s intersessional meetings in Geneva once, in April 2013.

Yemen 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]

Yemen is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is not party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Production, transfer, and stockpiling

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

Evidence that came to light in 2013 and 2014 (detailed below) indicates that Yemen likely used RBK cluster bombs in 2009, indicating that it may have stockpiled cluster munitions in the past and possibly continues to do so.

Jane’s Information Group reported in 2004 that KMG-U dispensers that deploy submunitions are in service with the country’s air force.[5] Moldova exported 13 220mm Uragan multiple launch rocket systems to Yemen in 1994, and Yemen possesses Grad 122mm surface-to-surface rocket launchers, but it is not known if the ammunition for these weapons includes versions with submunition payloads.[6]

Use

In May 2015, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported evidence that a Saudi Arabia-led coalition used US-made and -supplied cluster munitions in April and May 2015 in airstrikes against Ansar Allah (Houthi forces) in Yemen’s northern Saada governorate bordering Saudi Arabia.[7] Three types of cluster munitions have been used in the conflict in Yemen, which started on 25 March 2015 and was continuing as of 1 August 2015.

In May 2015, HRW reported the use of air-dropped cluster munitions at al-Shaaf in Saqeen in the western part of Saada governorate seen in a video uploaded on April 17 by a pro-Houthi YouTube channel.[8] It also identified cluster munition remnants in photographs taken by locals on 17 April at the site of an airstrike near al-Amar in al-Safraa, 30 kilometers south of Saada City. A subsequent research visit by HRW to al-Amar confirmed the use of cluster munitions, including the presence of remnants.[9]

Both attacks used US-made and -supplied CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed Weapons that deploy 10 BLU-108 canisters, which each release four submunitions called “skeets” by the manufacturer. HRW found these cluster munitions were used within 600 meters of villages in one attack, in possible violation of US law. It also found that some of the cluster munitions malfunctioned as their submunitions did not disperse from the canister or dispersed but did not explode.[10]

HRW reported the Saudi coalition’s use of US-made CBU-87 Combined Effects Munitions, each containing 202 BLU-97 submunitions, in the al-Maqash and al-Nushoor districts of Saada City on 23 May 2015.

HRW also reported the use of ground-launched cluster munitions containing “ZP-39” submunitions near Baqim in Saada province on 29 April 2015, but could not determine who was responsible for this use.[11] The “ZP-39” is a dual-purpose improved conventional munition (DPICM) but its manufacturer and delivery system are not publicly known or reported by standard international reference materials. Neither Saudi nor Houthi forces are known to possess “ZP-39” submunitions, but both have rocket launchers and tube artillery capable of delivering them.[12]

Evidence has also emerged on social media indicating that a fourth type of cluster munition may have been used in the Yemen conflict. On 2 July 2015, Abdulrahman Alrazhi tweeted a photograph showing a child holding two M77 submunitions from a ground-launched M26 rocket and stated that the munitions had been used in his district of Razeh in Saada.[13] On 8 June, a Saudi reporter tweeted a photograph showing a M26 rocket containing M77 submunitions in Saudi Arabia’s southern Jizan province, which borders Yemen’s Saada governorate.[14] That photograph shows the rocket’s motor section is missing indicating that the rocket misfired upon launch and failed to reach its destination and function as designed to disperse the submunitions.[15]

Saudi Arabia and other members of the coalition possess attack aircraft of US and Western/NATO origin capable of dropping US-made cluster bombs, while Yemen’s Soviet supplied aircraft are not capable of delivering US-made cluster bombs. Houthi forces may operate artillery and rocket systems capable of delivering DPICM submunitions.[16]

Responses to the cluster munition use

As of 1 August 2015, the government of Saudi Arabia had not issued a formal statement to confirm or deny the reports that the Saudi-led coalition used cluster munitions in Yemen in April and May 2015.[17] However, in numerous media interviews, Saudi Arabia’s principle military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Ahmed Asiri acknowledged use of CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed Weapons in Yemen, but argued they were not used in populated areas against civilians and are not prohibited weapons for Saudi Arabia.[18]

CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed Weapons are banned by the Convention on Cluster Munitions, as they fall under the convention’s definition of a cluster munition specified in Article 2. The US acknowledges that CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed Weapons are the only cluster munitions “that meet that our stringent requirements for unexploded ordnance rates, which may not exceed 1 percent.”[19]

The cluster munition use in Yemen has received worldwide media coverage, public outcry, and has been condemned by more than a dozen states, including Costa Rica as president of the convention’s Fifth Meeting of States Parties.[20]

At the convention’s intersessional meetings in June 2015, more than two-dozen states expressed concern at or condemned new use of cluster munitions, and half specifically referenced the evidence of new use in Yemen.[21] The UN, the ICRC, and the CMC also condemned the use of cluster munitions.

On 9 July 2015, the European Parliament (EP) adopted a resolution condemning the Saudi-led coalition airstrikes in Yemen, including the use of cluster bombs.[22] In a European Parliament debate on 13 July 2015, EP member Marietje Schaake spoke on behalf of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe to request that reports of cluster munition use by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen “be investigated thoroughly by the United Nations” as they “have serious consequences, if confirmed.”[23]

Previous use

Saudi Arabia and the US, and likely the Yemeni government, used cluster munitions in separate attacks in Yemen in 2009.

In late 2009, in Yemen’s Saada governorate, the Saudi Air Force conducted airstrikes and Saudi armed forces intervened on the ground after fighting between the government of Yemen and Ansar Allah intensified and spilled over the border with Saudi Arabia. In July 2013, the Monitor reviewed photographs taken by clearance operators in Saada governorate showing the remnants of unexploded BLU-97 and BLU-61 submunitions as well as DPICM submunitions of an unknown origin.[24] Remnants of CBU-52 cluster bombs were filmed near Saada City and broadcast by VICE News in May 2014.[25] In addition, the Houthi administration in Saada provided VICE News with photographs showing remnants of Soviet-made RBK-250-275 AO-1SCh cluster bombs and associated antipersonnel fragmentation submunitions.[26] Yemen’s Soviet-supplied aircraft are capable of delivering Soviet-made RBK cluster bombs.

US use in 2009

On 17 December 2009, the US used at least five ship- or submarine-launched TLAM-D cruise missiles, each containing 166 BLU-97 submunitions, to attack a “terrorist group” training camp in al-Ma‘jalah in the al-Mahfad district of Abyan governorate in southern Yemen. The attack killed 55 people, including 41 civilians living in a Bedouin camp.[27] Neither the US nor the Yemeni government has publicly responded to confirm or deny the use.[28] The US has never exported the TLAM-D cruise missile.

A 2010 report of the Yemeni parliament’s investigation into the attack called on the Yemeni government to investigate and “hold accountable those found guilty” of “mistakes that were made causing the deaths of…innocent victims” and called on the Yemeni authorities to compensate victims and remove cluster munition remnants from the site.[29]

The government of Yemen accepted the report’s findings in 2010, but does not appear to have implemented the recommendation to clear the contaminated area and provide compensation for the casualties caused and damaged property. An October 2013 report by HRW found the cluster munition remnants from the 2009 attack at al-Ma‘jalah were never cleared and have killed four more civilians and wounded 13 more in the period since the strike. The most recent casualty was on 24 January 2012, when a young boy brought home a bomblet that exploded, killing his father and wounding him and his two brothers.[30]