Summary: Non-signatory Jordan has expressed interest in the Convention on Cluster Munitions, but has not taken any steps to join it. Jordan last participated in a meeting of the convention in 2012. Jordan voted in favor of a key United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution on the convention in December 2022.

Jordan is not known to have used or produced cluster munitions, but has imported them and is believed to possess a stockpile.

Policy

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

Jordan has expressed interest in the convention but has not taken any steps to accede to it. In 2012, Prince Mired Ben Raad Zeid al-Hussein told States Parties that “We realize and appreciate the importance of the Convention on Cluster Munitions…Hopefully circumstances will change some time in the not too distant future and we will be able to join.”[1] Prince Mired has served as special envoy for the Mine Ban Treaty, which Jordan has ratified, and said in 2010 that Jordan supported the Convention on Cluster Munitions “from the sidelines” but had not decided “if and when we can join.”[2]

Jordan participated in two meetings of the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions but did not attend the formal negotiations in Dublin in May 2008.[3] Jordan attended an international conference on cluster munitions held in Santiago, Chile in June 2010.

Jordan participated as an observer at each of the convention’s first three Meetings of States Parties, held from 2010–2012, but not since then. Jordan was invited to, but did not attend, the convention’s Tenth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in August–September 2022.

In December 2022, Jordan voted in favor of the key UNGA resolution urging states outside the Convention on Cluster Munitions to “join as soon as possible.”[4] Jordan has voted in favor of the annual UNGA resolution promoting the convention since it was first introduced in 2015.

Jordan expressed concern at the use of cluster munitions in eastern Ukraine in 2014, describing the use of “such internationally prohibited weapons” as “a violation of the provisions of international law and a dangerous development that imperils the lives of citizens.”[5] In 2015, Jordan voted in favor of a Security Council resolution expressing concern at evidence of cluster munition use in Darfur, Sudan.[6] Jordan has also voted in favor of UNGA resolutions expressing outrage at cluster munition use in Syria.[7]

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

Production, transfer, and stockpiling

Jordan is not known to have produced or exported cluster munitions, but has imported them and possesses a stockpile.

Jordan has not provided information on the types and quantities of stockpiled cluster munitions.

According to United States (US) export records, Jordan imported 200 CBU-71 and 150 Rockeye cluster bombs at some point between 1970 and 1995.[8] The US also transferred 31,704 artillery projectiles (M509A1 and M483 projectiles) containing more than three million dual-purpose improved conventional munition (DPICM) submunitions to Jordan in 1995.[9]

Jordan reportedly possesses the Hydra-70 air-to-surface unguided rocket system, though it is not known whether the ammunition types available to it include the M261 multi-purpose submunition rocket.[10] Jordan received four NORINCO WM-80 multi-barrel rocket launchers from China in 2009–2010, but it is not known if this sale included 272mm cluster munition rockets, which contain 380 submunitions.[11]

Use

Jordan is not known to have used cluster munitions.

Jordan participated in the Saudi Arabian-led joint military operation that used cluster munitions in Yemen against Houthi forces in 2015–2016.