Summary: State Party Tunisia ratified the convention on 28 September 2010. It has participated in meetings of the convention, most recently in 2018. Tunisia voted in favor of a key United Nations (UN) resolution promoting the convention in December 2018.

Tunisia told the Monitor in 2011 that it has never used, produced, transferred, or stockpiled cluster munitions. It must submit its initial transparency report for the convention to formally confirm this.

Policy

The Republic of Tunisia signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 12 January 2009, ratified on 28 September 2010, and the convention entered into force for the country on 1 March 2011.

Tunisia informed the Monitor in April 2011 that it adheres to the convention under the terms of its ratification law enacted in February 2010.

Tunisia submitted its initial Article 7 transparency report on 12 June 2019. The report was originally due by 28 August 2011. Tunisia believes its existing national law is sufficient to enforce the convention, reporting that the “Ministry of Justice was formed to establish a national committee to review the criminal justice provisions, which included….crimes of the use of prohibited weapons globally.”[1]

Tunisia participated in one regional meeting of the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions, in Livingstone, Zambia in March 2008. It was the first country to sign the convention at the UN in New York after the convention was opened for signature at the Oslo Signing Conference in December 2008.[2]

Tunisia has participated in several of the convention’s meetings.[3] It attended the convention’s Eighth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in September 2018, but did not make a statement.

Tunisia voted in favor of a UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution on the Convention on Cluster Munitions in December 2018 that urges states outside the convention to “join as soon as possible.”[4] It has voted in favor of the annual UNGA resolutions promoting the convention since it was first introduced in 2015.

Tunisia has voted in favor of UNGA resolutions that express outrage at the use of cluster munitions in Syria, most recently in December 2018.[5]

Tunisia is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is also party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

In its initial Article 7 transparency report submitted 12 June 2019, Tunisia reported that it had never used, produced, transferred, or stockpiled cluster munitions.[6] Tunisia had previously reported this information to the Monitor.[7]