Nauru
Cluster Munition Ban Policy
Summary: State Party Nauru ratified the convention on 4 February 2013. Nauru has yet to deliver an initial transparency report for the convention to confirm that it has never used, produced, transferred, or stockpiled cluster munitions.
Policy
The Republic of Nauru signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Oslo on 3 December 2008, ratified on 4 February 2013, and the convention entered into force for the country on 1 August 2013.
Nauru has not indicated if it intends to enact legislation or other national implementation measures to enforce the provisions of the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
As of 20 June 2017, Nauru has not submitted its initial Article 7 transparency report for the convention, originally due by 28 January 2014.
Nauru first expressed its support for a ban on cluster munitions during the Oslo Process when it participated in the Wellington Conference on Cluster Munitions in February 2008 and endorsed the Wellington Declaration agreeing to the conclusion of a legally-binding instrument.[1] Nauru did not attend the subsequent Dublin negotiations of the convention, but signed the convention in Oslo in December 2008.
Nauru has never participated in a meeting of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, but it has attended regional meetings on unexploded ordnance in the Pacific in recent years.
Nauru has yet to provide its views on certain important issues related to interpretation and implementation of the convention, such as the prohibition on transit, the prohibition on assistance during joint military operations with states not party that may use cluster munitions, the prohibition on foreign stockpiling of cluster munitions, the prohibition on investment in production of cluster munitions, and the retention of cluster munitions for training and development purposes.
Nauru has voted in favor of UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions condemning the use of cluster munitions in Syria.[2]
Nauru is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is also party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.
Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling
Nauru is not known to have ever used, produced, transferred, or stockpiled cluster munitions.
[1] For more details on Nauru’s cluster munition policy and practice up to early 2009, see Human Rights Watch and Landmine Action, Banning Cluster Munitions: Government Policy and Practice (Ottawa: Mines Action Canada, May 2009), pp. 123–124.
[2] Nauru did not participate in the vote on “Situation of human rights in the Syrian Arab Republic,” UNGA Resolution 70/234, 23 December 2015. Nauru voted in favor of similar resolutions on 18 December 2014, and on 15 May and 18 December 2013.