Summary: Non-signatory Mongolia has expressed support for the ban on cluster munitions, but has not taken any steps toward accession. Mongolia voted in favor of the first UN General Assembly resolution on the convention in December 2015 and has participated in several of the convention’s Meetings of States Parties, most recently in September 2014. Mongolia is not known to have used, produced, or exported cluster munitions. In 2014, Mongolia stated that it does not have any stocks of the weapons; the Monitor is seeking formal confirmation of this comment.

Policy

Mongolia has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Mongolia has expressed support for the convention, but is not known to have taken any steps toward acceding to it.

On 7 December 2015, Mongolia voted in favor of the first UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution on the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which called on states outside the convention to “join as soon as possible.”[1] Mongolia did not explain the reasons for its support of the non-binding resolution that 140 countries voted for, including many non-signatories.

Mongolia first expressed its views on cluster munitions in September 2013, when it stated that it “attaches a particular importance” to the convention’s prohibition of “one of the most inhumane weapons of today” and supports efforts aimed at its universalization. Mongolia declared “We believe that the only guarantee against the risk of the use and proliferation of these weapons is their total elimination.”[2]

Also in September 2013, Mongolian President Elbegdorj Tsakhia praised “the indispensable role of coalitions of states and of NGOs, when the disarmament machinery fails, as exemplified by the successful conclusion of the landmines convention in 1997 and of the cluster munitions convention in 2008.”[3]

Mongolia did not participate in the 2007–2008 Oslo Process that created the convention.

Mongolia first participated in a meeting related to the convention in November 2009, when it attended a regional workshop on cluster munitions in Bali, Indonesia. Mongolia participated as an observer in three of the convention’s Meetings of States Parties, in 2010, 2013, and 2014. It was invited to, but did not attend the convention’s First Review Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia in September 2015. Mongolia did not participate in the convention’s intersessional meetings held annually in Geneva in 2011–2015.

Mongolia voted in favor of UNGA resolutions condemning the use of cluster munitions in Syria in 2013 and 2014.[4]

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

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Mongolia is not known to have used, produced, or exported cluster munitions.

In September 2014, a representative of Mongolia’s armed forces informed the Monitor that Mongolia possesses no stocks of cluster munitions.[5]

Jane’s Information Group reported in 2004 that the country’s air force had KMGU dispensers that deliver submunitions.[6] Mongolia possesses Grad 122mm surface-to-surface launchers, but it is not known if these include rockets with submunition payloads.[7]