Summary: Non-signatory Venezuela adopted the convention in 2008, but it has not taken any steps to accede to it. Venezuela has participated in a meeting of the convention and voted in favor of a key United Nations (UN) resolution on the convention in December 2017.

Venezuela is not known to have used, produced, or exported cluster munitions, but it imported them and destroyed an unspecified quantity of cluster munition stocks in August 2011.

Policy

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has not yet acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Venezuela has never commented on its lack of accession to the convention. In 2011, Venezuela said, “a binding tool leading us to a prohibition of the use, stockpiling, [and] transfer…would be the ideal” to address the humanitarian concerns raised by cluster munitions.[1]

Venezuela participated in several meetings of the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It joined in the consensus adoption of the convention text in Dublin on 30 May 2008, but expressed opposition to the convention’s Article 21 provisions on “interoperability” (relations with states not party), which it said “[undermines] the spirit and purpose” of the convention.[2]

Venezuela participated as an observer in the convention’s the Second Meeting of States Parties in Beirut, Lebanon in September 2011. This was its first and, to date, only attendance in a meeting of the convention.

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

Venezuela is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is also party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW).

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Venezuela is not known to have used, produced, or exported cluster munitions.

In August 2011, the Ministry of the Popular Power for the Defense of Venezuela announced the destruction of an unspecified number of cluster munitions belonging to the air force.[4] The cluster munitions, including Israeli-made AS TAL-1 cluster bombs, were destroyed at Fort Caribbean in El Pao, Cojedes as part an operation to destroy surplus ammunition and ordnance.

It is not clear if Venezuela has more stocks of TAL-1 cluster bombs or other cluster munitions. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has reported that Israel exported the LAR-160 surface-to-surface rocket system to Venezuela, but it is not known if ammunition containing submunitions was included in the deal.[5]