# Convention on Cluster Munitions The Convention on Cluster Munitions, adopted in Dublin in 2008 and in force from 2010, bans the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster munitions — weapons that disperse dozens or hundreds of submunitions over a wide area. It requires stockpile destruction, clearance of contaminated land, and victim assistance. The case against them is empirical rather than moral in the first instance. Submunitions fail to detonate at rates that have run from a few percent to well over twenty in field conditions, leaving unexploded bomblets that function as de facto minefields for decades. The Landmine Monitor casualty record consistently shows a majority of cluster-munition casualties occurring **after** the conflict, and a high proportion among children, who pick up objects the size and colour of a toy. It was built on the [[Ottawa Mine Ban Convention]] model — negotiated outside the consensus-bound Conference on Disarmament by a coalition of states and NGOs, banning a weapon on humanitarian grounds without a great-power bargain. **112 states parties and 12 signatories.** The United States is not a party and has never signed. ## Lithuania — The First Withdrawal **[[Lithuania]]'s withdrawal took effect on 6 March 2025.** It is the **first state ever to withdraw from the Convention**, and the presidency of the 13th Meeting of States Parties issued a formal statement on it. The rationale was the same one the five [[Ottawa Mine Ban Convention]] withdrawers gave: a border with Russia and [[Belarus]], and a judgment that area-denial weapons are necessary to slow an armoured advance. Lithuania did both — it left the cluster-munitions treaty in March 2025 and the mine-ban treaty in December 2025. **No other withdrawals** as of mid-August 2026. ## The American Position The US is not a party, never signed, and retains stockpiles. Two developments matter: **Transfers to Ukraine.** The Biden administration began transferring cluster munitions to Ukraine in **July 2023**, over objections from allies who *are* parties — a genuine legal problem for them, since the Convention prohibits assisting anyone in an act prohibited to a state party. Ukraine is also not a party. **New production.** Per the ICBL-CMC, the United States **contracted with Israel in September 2025 to manufacture new cluster munitions** — XM1208 projectiles. That is a resumption of production, not a drawdown of legacy stock. ## Why It Matters Here This page is short because its significance is comparative. Read on its own, it is one small European state leaving one treaty. Read against the [[Ottawa Mine Ban Convention]], it establishes a sequence. Lithuania left the cluster-munitions convention in **March 2025**; five states left the mine-ban convention between **December 2025 and February 2026**. The first withdrawal in the history of humanitarian disarmament was followed within a year by six more across two treaties, all from NATO states on Russia's periphery, all citing the same threat. That is the shape of a norm cascade running backwards. The Ottawa Process worked by making a weapon disreputable and letting the stigma do the enforcement — there was never an inspectorate. Stigma is a coordination equilibrium: it holds while everyone expects everyone else to hold, and unwinds fast once a state absorbs the cost of going first without being isolated. Lithuania went first, in March 2025, and was not isolated. The American contribution is separate but reinforcing. A non-party transferring the weapons to a non-party in 2023, and contracting for new production in 2025, removes any expectation that the world's largest military is drifting toward the norm. Both treaties were written on the assumption that it eventually would. ## See Also - [[Ottawa Mine Ban Convention]] — the model, and the larger 2025–26 unravelling - [[Chemical Weapons Convention]] — humanitarian prohibition that has held, and why - [[Russo-Ukrainian War]] — the driver - [[NATO]] — the alliance every withdrawing state belongs to - [[International Law Hub]]