Angola

Cluster Munition Ban Policy

Last updated: 22 June 2016

Summary: Signatory Angola regularly expresses its desire to ratify the convention, but has struggled to do so. Angola has participated in all of the convention’s international meetings. Angola is not known to have produced or exported cluster munitions. Cluster munitions were used in the past in Angola, but it is unclear when or by whom. The government has yet to make an official determination and public announcement confirming that all stocks of cluster munitions have been identified and destroyed.

Policy

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

Angolan officials have promised since 2009 that the government will soon ratify the convention.[1] However, in June 2015, Angola said it was “struggling” to ratify because of a lack of funds to ensure it can meet the convention’s obligation to clear areas contaminated by cluster munition remnants within 10 years.[2] Previously, in September 2013, Angola stated the ratification process was “already at a very advanced stage.”[3] At that time, an official informed the CMC that the ratification package had been prepared for cabinet and then parliamentary approval, repeating what another official said in 2011.[4]

In August 2015, Angola’s representative to Canada acknowledged a call for Angola to ratify the convention.[5]

Angola participated extensively in the Oslo Process and, while it did not attend the formal negotiations in Dublin in May 2008, it signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Oslo in December 2008.[6]

Angola attended the First Review Conference for the Convention on Cluster Munitions in September 2015, but did not make a statement. It has participated in all of the convention’s Meetings of States Parties and intersessional meetings. Angola has participated in regional workshops on the convention, most recently in New York on 16 April 2015.

On 7 December 2015, Angola was absent from the vote on the first UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution on the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which urges states outside the convention to “join as soon as possible.”[7] However, it voted in favor of the draft resolution during the first round in the UNGA First Committee on Disarmament and International Security on 4 November 2015.[8]

As a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC), Angola voted on 29 June 2015 for a UNSC resolution that expressed concern at evidence of cluster munition use in Darfur and called on the government of Sudan to “immediately investigate the use of cluster munitions.”[9] On 27 May 2014, Angola voted in favor of a UNSC resolution on South Sudan that notes “with serious concern” reports of the “indiscriminate use of cluster munitions” and calls on “all parties to refrain from similar such use in the future.”[10]

Angola has abstained from voting on recent UNGA resolutions condemning the use of cluster munitions in Syria, most recently in December 2015.[11]

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

Production, transfer, and use

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

Cluster munitions were used in the past in Angola, but it is unclear when or by whom. An Intersectoral Commission on Demining and Humanitarian Assistance (Comissão Nacional Intersectorial de Desminagem e Assistência Humanitária, CNIDAH) official who had seen cluster munitions remnants in Huambo province near Caala and Bailundo, probably from the heavy fighting during 1998–1999, said he believed that the Angolan Armed Forces used cluster munitions because only they used aircraft during this conflict, unlike the rebel UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) forces.[12]

Stockpiling and destruction

The government has not made an official determination and public announcement that all stocks have been identified and destroyed.

In June 2010, a CNIDAH official said that Angola had destroyed its stockpile of cluster munitions between 2003 and 2010 in a joint initiative of the government and HALO Trust, and that the armed forces no longer held any stocks.[13] In addition, HALO’s weapons and ammunition disposal teams, which operate in all 18 provinces destroying weapons caches belonging to the police, army, navy, and air force, found and destroyed 51 abandoned explosive submunitions in military warehouses.[14]

Deminers operating in Angola have also documented the presence of casings of Soviet-made RBK 250-275 cluster bombs among abandoned ammunition.[15]

Angola is also reported to possess BM-21 Grad and RM-70 122mm surface-to-surface rocket launchers, but it is not known if these include ammunition with submunition payloads.[16]



[1] Statement of Angola, Accra Regional Conference on the Universalization of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, 28 May 2012; Statement of Angola, Berlin Conference on Stockpile Destruction, 26 June 2009. Notes by AOAV.

[2] Statement of Angola, Convention on Cluster Munitions Intersessional Meetings, Geneva, 22 June 2015. Notes by the CMC.

[3] Statement of Angola, Convention on Cluster Munitions Fourth Meeting of States Parties, Lusaka, 10 September 2013.

[4] CMC meeting with Mario Costa, Technical Advisor, Intersectoral Commission on Demining and Humanitarian Assistance (Comissão Nacional Intersectorial de Desminagem e Assistência Humanitária, CNIDAH), Lusaka, 10 September 2013. In 2011, Angolan officials indicated that the ratification package was being prepared for submission to the Council of Ministers. Statement of Angola, Convention on Cluster Munitions Second Meeting of States Parties, Beirut, 14 September 2011.

[5] Letter to Paul Hannon, Mines Action Canada from Ambassador Edgar Martins, Embassy of the Republic of Angola to Canada, 5 August 2015.

[6] For details on Angola’s 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. 29.

[7]Implementation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions,” UNGA Resolution 70/54, 7 December 2015.

[8]Implementation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions,” UNGA Resolution AC.1/70/L.49/Rev.1, 11 November 2015.

[9] UNSC Resolution 2228, 29 June 2015. The five permanent members of the UNSC voted in favor of the resolution in addition to non-permanent members Angola, Chad, Chile, Jordan, Lithuania, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Spain, and Venezuela.

[11]Situation of human rights in the Syrian Arab Republic,” UNGA Resolution 70/234, 23 December 2015. Angola abstained from voting on similar resolutions on 15 May and 18 December 2013 and on 18 December 2014.  

[12] Interview with Jorge Repouso Leonel Maria, Liaison Officer, CNIDAH, Huambo, 21 April 2010.

[13] CMC meetings with Maria Madalena Neto, Victim Assistance Coordinator, CNIDAH, International Conference on the Convention on Cluster Munitions, Santiago, 7–9 June 2010. Notes by the CMC/Human Rights Watch. Maria Madalena Neto later confirmed this statement, noting that the air force headed up a task force responsible for the program. Email from Maria Madalena Neto, CNIDAH, 13 August 2010.

[14] Response to Monitor questionnaire by Helen Tirebuck, Programme Manager, HALO Trust, 15 March 2011.

[15] Landmine Action, “Note on Cluster Munitions in Angola,” 10 February 2004. In the past, Jane’s Information Group noted that KMGU dispensers that deploy submunitions were in service for Angolan aircraft. Robert Hewson, ed., Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons, Issue 44 (Surrey, UK: Jane’s Information Group Limited, 2004), p. 835.

[16] International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2011 (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 410.