Ten-Year Review: Non-signatory Bahrain has expressed interest in the convention but has not taken any steps to join it. Bahrain has participated as an observer in one meeting of the convention, in September 2018. It has abstained from voting on an annual United Nations (UN) resolution promoting the convention since 2015.

Bahrain is not known to have produced, exported, or used cluster munitions, but possesses a stockpile of cluster munitions, primarily imported from the United States (US).

Policy

The Kingdom of Bahrain has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

While government officials have expressed interest in the convention, Bahrain has not taken any steps to accede to it over the past decade.[1]

Bahrain participated in a couple of meetings of the Oslo Process that created the convention and joined in the consensus adoption of the convention in Dublin in May 2008, but did not attend the signing conference in Oslo in December 2008.[2] During the Wellington Conference on Cluster Munitions in February 2008, Bahrain called upon states “to stop using such weapons, and should consider such use as a crime against humanity” and affirmed it “strongly supports all efforts to eliminate all kinds of cluster munitions, and to prohibit their use, transfer, trade and stockpiling.”[3]

Bahrain participated as an observer in the convention’s Eighth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in September 2018. This marked its first and to date only participation in a meeting, of the convention.

In December 2019, Bahrain abstained from voting on a key UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution, which urges states outside the Convention on Cluster Munitions to “join as soon as possible.”[4] Bahrain has abstained from voting on the annual UNGA resolution promoting the convention since it was first introduced in 2015.

Bahrain has voted in favor of UNGA resolutions condemning the use of cluster munitions in Syria, most recently in December 2019.[5]

Bahrain is not party to the Mine Ban Treaty. Bahrain is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Production, transfer, and stockpiling

Bahrain is not known to have produced or exported cluster munitions, but it possesses a stockpile.

Bahrain imported cluster munitions from the US, receiving 30,000 surplus M509A1, M449A1, and M483 artillery projectiles containing 5.06 million dual-purpose improved conventional munition (DPICM) submunitions in 1995–2001.[6] It also received M26 cluster munition rockets and ATACMS-1A missiles from the US containing more than one million submunitions for M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) launchers. Bahrain also purchased 151 M26A1 MLRS extended range rocket pods (six missiles per pod, 644 submunitions per rocket) from the US in 1996 as well as 55 rocket pods in 1997 and 57 rocket pods in 2003.[7] In 2000, Bahrain purchased 30 M39 ATACMS-1A missiles, each with 950 M74 submunitions.[8]

Jane’s Information Group has listed Bahrain as possessing the Hydra-70 air-to-surface unguided rocket system, but it is not known if this includes the M261 submunition variant. The same source lists UK-made BL755 cluster bombs in the inventory of Bahrain’s air force.[9]

Use

Bahrain is not known to have used cluster munitions. Since March 2015, it has participated in a Saudi Arabia-led joint military operation in Yemen that has used cluster munitions against Houthi forces, also known as Ansar Allah.