AFGHANISTAN JOINS THE CONVENTION ON CERTAIN CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS
Afghanistan on 9 August 2017 joined the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) and all of its five Protocols, notably Protocol I on Non-Detectable Fragments; Amended Protocol II on Mines, booby-traps and other devices; Protocol III on Incendiary Weapons; Protocol IV on Blinding Laser Weapons and Protocol V on Explosive Remnants of War. Afghanistan is the 125th State party to the CCW.
Ambassador Alice Guitton of France, whose delegation is coordinating the deliberations on improvised explosive devices within the CCW context this year, along with Ambassador Beatriz Londoño Soto of Colombia, who is President-designate of the 2017 Nineteenth Annual Conference of the High Contracting Parties to Amended Protocol II, welcomed the news of Afghanistan’s accession to the CCW.
At an informal meeting on improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Geneva on 31 August 2017, the Ambassadors stated, “We warmly welcome Afghanistan's accession and encourage more States to consider acceding, and those that have yet to join may participate in the work of the Convention as observers.”
The purpose of the Convention and its Protocols is to ban or restrict the use of specific types of weapons that are considered to cause unnecessary or unjustifiable suffering to combatants or to affect civilians indiscriminately. The Convention itself contains general provisions. All prohibitions or restrictions on the use of specific weapons or weapon systems are the object of the Protocols annexed to the Convention, which attempts to strike a balance between humanitarian concerns and military considerations.
For use of the information media; not an official record
DC/17/32E