Summary: Non-signatory Bangladesh has not elaborated its view on cluster munitions or its position on joining the convention. However, it voted in favor of key UN resolutions on the convention in 2015 and 2016 and has participated in two of the convention’s meetings, most recently in 2014. Bangladesh is not known to have used, produced, exported, or possessed any stockpiles of cluster munitions.

Policy

The People’s Republic of Bangladesh has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Bangladesh has never made a public statement elaborating its views on cluster munitions or position on joining the convention.[1]

In December 2016, Bangladesh voted in favor of a key UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution, which urges states outside the Convention on Cluster Munitions to “join as soon as possible.”[2] It previously voted in favor of the first UNGA resolution on the convention in December 2015.[3] Bangladesh did not explain why it supported these non-binding resolutions, which many non-signatories voted for.

Bangladesh participated in several meetings of the Oslo Process that created the convention, but did not attend the formal negotiations in Dublin in May 2008.[4] It attended a regional conference on cluster munitions in Bali, Indonesia, in November 2009.

Bangladesh participated as an observer in the convention’s Meeting of States Parties in 2013 and 2014, as well as intersessional meetings of the convention in 2011 and 2014. Bangladesh was invited to, but did not attend the convention’s Sixth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in September 2016. At the time, the country’s representative in Geneva told the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) that Bangladesh has no objection to the convention.[5]

Bangladesh is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is also party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Bangladesh is not known to have used, produced, transferred, or stockpiled cluster munitions. In September 2013, a representative of Bangladesh’s armed forces told the CMC that Bangladesh does not possess cluster munitions.[6]