Summary: Signatory Jamaica said in 2015 that it is working to ratify the convention at the earliest opportunity. It has participated in two of the convention’s Meetings of States Parties. Jamaica is not known to have ever used, produced, or transferred cluster munitions and said 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.

At the UN General Assembly (UNGA) First Committee on Disarmament and International Security in October 2015, Jamaica said “we are currently working towards ensuring our ratification [of the convention] at the earliest opportunity.”[1] In July 2015, the high commissioner for Jamaica to Canada informed local campaigners that “Jamaica will endeavor to ratify the Treaty at the earliest opportunity” and said the government remains “committed to the elimination of these indiscriminate weapons.”[2]

Previously, in September 2014, Jamaica informed States Parties that it was “in the process of preparing applicable domestic legislation with a view to acceding to the Convention at its earliest opportunity.”[3]

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.[4]

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 subsequently attended the convention’s Fifth Meeting of States Parties in San Jose, Costa Rica in September 2014, but was absent from the First Review Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia in September 2015.[5]

Jamaica participated in a regional workshop on cluster munitions in Santiago, Chile in December 2013.

On 7 December 2015, Jamaica voted in favor of the first UNGA resolution on the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which urges states outside the convention to “join as soon as possible.”[6] Jamaica has voted in favor of UNGA resolutions condemning the use of cluster munitions in Syria, most recently Resolution 70/234 on 23 December 2015, which “deplores and condemns” the continued use.[7]

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.”[8] Jamaica is not known to have ever used, produced, or transferred the weapons.