It is extremely rare for countries to walk away from longstanding commitments under International Humanitarian Law (IHL), but Lithuania has become the first State Party to vote to leave the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions.
In doing so Lithuania is staining its otherwise excellent reputation on these weapons and on disarmament more generally. It is also ignoring abundant evidence demonstrating the foreseeable risk of civilian harm from these often indiscriminate weapons, which leave large areas of land unusable for decades.
Delivered from aircraft or fired in rockets, missiles, and artillery projectiles, cluster munitions open in the air to disperse multiple submunitions over a wide area. Many submunitions fail to detonate as designed and pose a long-lasting danger, like landmines.
These weapons have been prohibited by a majority of the world’s nations because, when used in populated areas, they predominantly harm civilians both at the time of use and for years afterward. According to Cluster Munition Monitor, a nonprofit organization which tracks “adherence to and compliance” with the Convention, at least 95 percent of those killed or wounded by cluster munitions in 2022, in which the victim’s status was recorded, were civilians, and children accounted for 71 percent of casualties from cluster munition remnants.
The Convention on Cluster Munitions comprehensively bans any use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of these weapons under any circumstances. Since the convention entered into force on Aug. 1, 2010, the 112 countries that have ratified it have abided by the core provisions; none have engaged in prohibited activities like transferring or using the weapons.
The Convention is also a lifesaving instrument as it requires the destruction of stockpiles, clearance of cluster munition remnants, and assistance to survivors of the weapons.
On July 18, Lithuania’s parliament adopted a legislative proposal to leave the Convention. The law entered into force on July 26, one day after it was signed by President Gitanas Nausėda.
This decision came as a surprise, particularly because Lithuania has never produced, stockpiled, transferred, or used cluster munitions. It has actively participated in the Convention’s meetings and has repeatedly expressed concern at the use of cluster munitions by countries such as Russia and Syria.
However, over the past year Lithuanian defense officials have made the case for the country to leave the Convention, asserting that cluster munitions are a necessary weapon due to changes in the national security situation, especially since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Human Rights Watch (where I work), the United Nations, and others have documented that repeated Russian cluster munitions attacks have killed and injured hundreds of Ukrainian civilians since 2022. Ukrainian forces have also used cluster munitions, resulting in civilian casualties.
At the Eleventh Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munition in September 2023, member countries including Lithuania condemned “any use of cluster munitions by any actor.” They expressed “grave concern at the significant increase in civilian casualties and the humanitarian impact resulting from the repeated and well documented use of cluster munitions” since 2021, particularly with respect to “the use of cluster munitions in Ukraine.”
Lithuania’s withdrawal will take effect six months after the documents are submitted to the United Nations and the convention’s States Parties as long as Lithuania is not engaged in armed conflict at that time. Article 20 of the Convention explicitly prevents a State Party that is engaged in armed conflict from withdrawing before the end of the conflict.
During the parliamentary debate, Defense Minister, Laurynas Kasčiūnas, said that “when we ratified this convention [in 2011] it was a different era. Now everything is much more complicated. Therefore, it would be very wrong if the state, while preparing for its defense, would immediately say what capacity it would not use for its defense.”
Similarly, Lithuania’s Deputy Minister of Defense, Renius Plečkis, told parliament that “the move to denounce the Convention is motivated by the need to make the most of all opportunities to strengthen our deterrence and defense.”
Yet IHL is not designed for when national security circumstances are considered secure, but rather for outright armed conflict. As the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric, notes, IHL “is not made for the hopeful days of peacetime. It is made for humanity’s darkest days, when armed conflict rages and people are in grave danger.”
Norway’s foreign affairs minister, Espen Barth Eide, has called Lithuania’s proposed withdrawal from the convention “regrettable.” He said, “it is vital that states uphold their obligations” when it comes to the ban on cluster munitions and “maintain international rules, norms and obligations for warfare, also when the security landscape changes.”
Plečkis told parliament that Lithuania is interested in acquiring cluster munitions. He said that Lithuania’s main defense partner, the United States, “will probably help us” in this regard.
Since July 2023, the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has approved five transfers to Ukraine of U.S. cluster munitions delivered by 155mm artillery projectiles and by ballistic missiles. A new report shows that cluster munitions held at a U.S. base in Germany have been transferred to Ukraine as part of U.S. military assistance, transiting across Germany and Poland in the process.
Russia, Ukraine, and the United States have not joined the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Regardless, the use of cluster munitions in areas with civilians present often makes an attack indiscriminate in violation of IHL, and possibly a war crime. The use of cluster munitions runs contrary to the emerging international norm stigmatizing these weapons.
No State has ever withdrawn from any of the five multilateral treaties that comprehensively prohibit an entire class of weapons and that were driven by humanitarian concerns (the Convention on Cluster Munitions, the Mine Ban Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons). The danger now is that Lithuania could move to withdraw from these humanitarian disarmament standard bearers. And that others will follow its terrible precedent.
As President of the convention’s 12th Meeting of States Parties, which opens at the United Nations in Geneva on Sept. 10, Mexico has strongly discouraged Lithuania from withdrawing. Mexico instead recommends using “multilateralism, humanitarian ethos and respect for the rule of law” as “key values to guide us forward” in the wake of the decision.
All Parties to the Convention need to publicly and vocally reaffirm the value and importance of this instrument. Silence sends a bleak message to other countries that might be considering leaving. They should do their utmost to discourage any actions by States that would undermine or weaken it. Civilians’ lives and limbs depend on it.