Five-Year Review: Non-signatory Brazil has participated in some meetings of the convention, but officials rarely comment on the government’s position on acceding to it. Legislative initiatives aimed at banning cluster munitions have been attempted twice in the lower house of the National Congress since 2008. Brazil is a producer of cluster munitions and maintains a stockpile; it has also been a significant exporter.

Policy

The Federative Republic of Brazil has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Brazil’s government officials—from high-level political leaders to diplomatic representatives—rarely discuss the government’s view on joining the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Previously, in September 2013, a government representative informed the CMC that Brazil has nothing to say publicly on its position on banning cluster munitions.[1]

Brazil objects to the non-traditional diplomatic process that brought about the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which, in its view, did not balance legitimate defense needs with humanitarian concerns.[2] During the Oslo Process that created the convention, Brazil maintained that cluster munitions were effective militarily and stated the most appropriate way to address cluster munitions was through existing international humanitarian law and the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW).[3] Brazil supported an effort to conclude a CCW protocol regulating cluster munitions that failed in 2011, effectively ending CCW deliberations on the weapons and leaving the Convention on Cluster Munitions as the sole multilateral instrument to specifically address cluster munitions. Brazil has not proposed any CCW work on cluster munitions since 2011.

Brazil participated minimally in the Oslo Process that produced the Convention on Cluster Munitions and did not attend the formal negotiations in Dublin in May 2008.[4] It has criticized two provisions in the convention: the definition of a cluster munitions and Article 21, which was aimed at facilitating “interoperability” or joint military operations with states not party.[5]

In June 2008, after the adoption of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, Brazil’s then-Minister of Foreign Affairs Celso Amorim said that he considered cluster munitions to be an inhumane weapon that should be eliminated, and said that Brazil would review its position and in the future may join the convention.[6] However by November 2008, Brazil said the government did not support the Convention on Cluster Munitions because of its view that the process and convention did not balance legitimate defense needs with humanitarian concerns.[7]

Brazil has participated in some of meetings of the Convention on Cluster Munitions since 2008, most recently the convention’s intersessional meetings in Geneva in April 2014. It has participated as an observer in one of the convention’s annual Meeting of States Parties the Second Meeting of States Parties in Beirut, Lebanon in September 2011. Brazil was invited to, but did not attend, the convention’s Fifth Meeting of States Parties in San Jose, Costa Rica in September 2014.

Brazil has voted in favor of UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions condemning the use of cluster munitions in Syria, including Resolution 69/189 on 18 December 2014, which expressed “outrage” at the continued use.[8] Brazil voted in favor of three Human Rights Council resolutions in 2014 and 2015 that condemned the use of cluster munitions in Syria, most recently on 2 July 2015.[9]

Legislative initiatives to ban cluster munitions have been attempted twice in the lower house of the National Congress since 2008, but neither progressed beyond the committee stage. Deputy Rubens Bueno introduced draft legislation to ban cluster munitions in February 2012, while Deputy Fernando Gabeira introduced similar legislation in February 2009.[10] Campaigners have participated in congressional briefings, sometimes on the same panel as military representatives.

Brazilian members of the CMC have undertaken an array of activities in recent years to draw attention to the need for Brazil to ban its production and export of cluster munitions and join the ban convention, including with an action during the 2014 World Cup football tournament.[11]

Brazil is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is also party to the CCW.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Brazil has stated on several occasions that it has never used cluster munitions, but it has been a significant producer and exporter, and maintains a stockpile of the weapons.[12]

In 2010, the Ministry of Defense stated that national military doctrine prohibits the use of cluster munitions in urban areas, that Brazil’s stockpiles of cluster munitions are limited, and that cluster bombs held by the air force should be destroyed soon because they are out of date.[13]

At least three companies have produced cluster munitions in Brazil, according to the companies’ own materials and to standard reference works:

• Avribrás Aeroespacial SA has produced the ASTROS family of surface-to-surface rockets with submunition warheads.[14]
• Ares Aeroespacial e Defesa Ltda has produced the FZ-100 70mm air-to-surface rockets, similar to the Hydra M261 multipurpose submunitions.[15]
• Target Engenharia et Comércio Ltda has produced two types of cluster bombs (BLG-120 and BLG-252) for the Brazilian Air Force and reportedly for export.[16]

It is not clear if any of these companies are currently producing cluster munitions. In 2010, a commercial director for Avribrás informed a hearing by the Committee on Foreign Affairs and National Defense of the Chamber of Deputies that the company generates US$60–70 million per year from sales of cluster munitions. In 2010, Brazil’s Ministry of Defense asserted that the cluster munition production capacity needed to be retained at current levels in order to support local defense manufacturing capacity.[17]

It is not clear when Brazil last exported cluster munitions. Brazil has exported ASTROS-manufactured surface-to-surface rockets with submunition warheads to Iran, Iraq, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia.[18] Saudi Arabian forces use of ASTROS rocket system against Iraqi forces during the battle of Khafji in January 1991 resulted in remnants including a significant number of unexploded submunitions.[19] In 2003, Human Rights Watch researchers photographed abandoned stocks of the ASTROS II launcher system at an unsecured facility in Iraq.[20]

In July 2012, a major newspaper reported that Brazil sold cluster bombs made by Target Engenharia et Comércio Ltda to Zimbabwe a decade earlier.[21]

In 2011, Deputy Gabeira said the government had refused “as a matter of security” to respond to his request for a list of the countries where Brazil has exported cluster munitions.[22]