Summary: Non-signatory Mongolia has expressed support for the ban on cluster munitions but has not taken any steps to join the convention. Mongolia has participated in several meetings of the convention, but not since 2014. It voted in favor of a key United Nations (UN) resolution promoting the convention in December 2017.

Mongolia is not known to have used, produced, or exported cluster munitions. In 2014, Mongolia informed the Monitor that it does not have any stocks of the weapons.

Policy

Mongolia has not taken steps to accede to the convention but supports its objective. In September 2013, it said the Convention on Cluster Munitions prohibits “one of the most inhumane weapons of today,” and commented that “the only guarantee against the risk of the use and proliferation of these weapons is their total elimination.”[1]

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.”[2]

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 then participated as an observer in the convention’s Meetings of States Parties in 2010, 2013, and 2014. It has not attended a meeting of the convention since 2014.

In December 2017, Mongolia voted in favor of a UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution, which called on states outside the Convention on Cluster Munitionsto “join as soon as possible.”[3] It voted in favor of previous resolutions promoting implementation of the convention in 2015 and 2016.

Mongolia has voted in favor of UNGA resolutions condemning the use of cluster munitions in Syria.[4] It has also voted for Human Rights Council (HRC) resolutions condemning the use of cluster munitions in Syria.[5]

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 stockpiles of cluster munitions.[6]

Jane’s Information Group reported in 2004 that the country’s air force had KMGU dispensers that deliver submunitions.[7] Mongolia possesses Grad122mm surface-to-surface launchers, but it is not known if these include rockets with submunition payloads.[8]