Rwanda

The Republic of Rwanda signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Oslo on 3 December 2008. In March 2009, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed to the CMC that Rwanda had begun its ratification process and hoped to announce its ratification shortly.^[1]

Rwanda has stated that it does not use, produce, stockpile, or transfer cluster munitions.^[2]

Rwanda did not participate in any of the Oslo Process diplomatic conferences to develop the convention in 2007 or 2008, or the formal negotiations in Dublin in May 2008. In September 2008, it attended the regional conference on cluster munitions in Kampala and endorsed the Kampala Action Plan, which declared that states should sign and “take all necessary measures to ratify the convention as soon as possible.”^[3]

Upon signing the convention in Oslo, Rwanda noted that while developing countries might not have the capacity to produce such destructive instruments, they were particularly vulnerable to them. Rwanda stated that it was fully committed to the convention.^[4]

Rwanda is not party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW). It attended the CCW session on cluster munitions in November 2008 as an observer.