Summary: Signatory Cyprus has committed to ratifying the convention, but its parliament still has not approved draft ratification legislation introduced in 2011. Cyprus has participated in several meetings of the convention, most recently in September 2016. It however abstained from the vote on a key UN resolution on the convention in December 2016.

Cyprus states that it has never used or produced cluster munitions. It has not provided information on the quantities and types of its stockpiled cluster munitions, but in June 2017, Bulgaria reported that in 2014 it received 3,760 cluster munitions and 2,559 submunitions transferred from Cyprus for the purposes of stockpile destruction. The stocks have not been destroyed, as of July 2016.

Policy

The Republic of Cyprus signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 23 September 2009.

In October 2016, Cyprus made a statement explaining its decision to abstain from voting for a non-binding resolution by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) that calls on states outside the Convention on Cluster Munitions to “join as soon as possible.” Cyprus stated that “the ratification process is still ongoing due to considerations regarding the security situation on the island. We remain hopeful that these issues will be resolved which would then enable us to ratify the convention and vote in favor of this resolution in the future.”[1]

This statement repeats a previous one given by Cyprus one year earlier upon abstaining from the first non-binding UNGA resolution on the Convention on Cluster Munitions.[2]

Cyprus participated in one international conference of the Oslo Process to develop the convention text (Vienna in December 2007), but attended the formal negotiations of the convention in Dublin in May 2008 and the Convention on Cluster Munitions Signing Conference in Oslo in December 2008 only as an observer.

Cyprus subsequently signed the convention at the UN in New York in September 2009, becoming the 100^th signatory to the convention.

Since 2011, various government officials have communicated with the Monitor and the CMC about the ratification process.[3] In May 2015, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed the Monitor that the ratification process was still being considered by parliament, particularly “the fact that Turkey, whose occupation forces have been stationed illegally on Cyprus since 1974, has not yet joined the convention.”[4]

When the draft ratification legislation for the convention was introduced in the House of Representatives in 2011, Cyprus informed States Parties that it was expected to be approved in 2012.[5] But in April 2013, a government official informed the Monitor that ratification of the convention had “unfortunately…been put on hold” due to “other considerations” and expressed the government’s intent to ratify the convention in the future.[6] Cyprus participated in the convention’s Meetings of States Parties in 2011, 2012, and 2016, and attended intersessional meetings of the convention in Geneva in 2011–2013.

Cyprus has voted in favor of UNGA resolutions expressing outrage at the use of cluster munitions in Syria, most recently in December 2016.[7]

Cyprus is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty.

Cyprus is also a party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), which it mentioned in the 2016 explanation of its vote abstaining from the UNGA resolution on the Convention on Cluster Munitions.[8]

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Cyprus informed the Monitor in 2012 that it has never used, produced, or transferred cluster munitions.[9]

Stockpiling

Cyprus has not disclosed information on the size or status of its stockpile of cluster munitions or provided a voluntary Article 7 report with information on its stockpiled cluster munitions.

In June 2017, however, Bulgaria reported that it has 3,760 4.2-inch OF projectile for mortar GRM 20 and 2,559 M20G submunitions on its territory that were transferred from Cyprus in 2014 for the purposes of stockpile destruction.[10] According to Bulgaria the cluster munitions are held by the private company EXPAL Bulgaria, which it said “should apply for and obtain a permission for destruction of [the cluster munitions].”

It is not clear if Cyprus possess other stocks of cluster munitions. It has 122mm BM-21 Grad multiple launch rockets, but it is not known if these weapons have cluster munition warheads.[11] Cyprus acquired other systems capable of delivering submunitions, including Zuzana 155mm howitzers imported via Greece from Slovakia in 2007 and M63 Plamen and M77 Oganj multiple-barrel rocket launchers from Yugoslavia in the 1980s.[12]

Additionally, in 2010, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official asserted that Turkish armed forces “have stocked considerable quantities of cluster bombs in the occupied territory of the Republic [of Cyprus].”[13]

Cyprus has not indicated if it intends to retain cluster munitions for research or training.