Summary: Non-signatory Nepal’s Minister of Foreign Affairs met with national campaigners in July 2017, who called on Nepal to accede to the Convention on Cluster Munitions without delay. Nepal abstained from voting on a key UN resolution on the convention in December 2016. It participated in a meeting of the convention once, in 2013. Nepal states that it has never used, produced, transferred, or stockpiled cluster munitions.

Policy

The Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Nepal has never made a public statement elaborating its position on accession to the convention.[1] In 2016 and 2017, government representatives met with national campaigners who raised the need for Nepal to join the convention without delay. On 13 July 2017, Nepal’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Krishna Bahadur Mahara met with representatives of the Nepal Campaign to Ban Landmines (NCBL), who called on the government to approve accession to the Convention on Cluster Munitions and Mine Ban Treaty as well as to prioritize support for victims of landmines and explosive weapons.[2]

In December 2016, Nepal abstained from the vote on a UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution that calls on states outside the Convention on Cluster Munitions to “join as soon as possible.”[3] It also abstained from voting on the first resolution on the convention in December 2015.[4]

Nepal participated in two meetings of the Oslo Process that created the convention (Vienna in December 2007 and Wellington in February 2008) but it did not attend the Dublin negotiations in May 2008.

Nepal participated as an observer in the convention’s Fourth Meeting of States Parties in Lusaka, Zambia, in September 2013, but did not make a statement. This was Nepal’s first and to date only participation in a meeting of the convention.

Over June–August 2016, the Cluster Munition Coalition’s (CMC) national partner, the NCBL, undertook a series of meetings with representatives from key government agencies and from the armed forces to advocate for steps the government could take towards joining the Convention on Cluster Munitions.[5] In February 2017, on the tenth anniversary of the start of the Oslo process, the NCBL wrote to the ministers of foreign affairs, defence, and peace and reconstruction, and the speaker of the house of representatives, to encourage Nepal’s accession to the convention as soon as possible.[6] In October 2016, Cluster Munition Coalition representatives met with Nepal’s Permanent Mission to the UN in New York to urge accession to the convention.[7]

Nepal is not party to the Mine Ban Treaty. Nor is it is a party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Nepal has stated that it has never used, produced, transferred, or stockpiled cluster munitions.[8]