Overview

The Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects, also known as the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), or Inhumane Weapons Convention, was concluded on 10 October 1980, and entered into force on 2 December 1983. The Convention was reviewed in 1996 and in 2001. The Secretary-General of the United Nations is the depositary of the Convention. As of December 2009, there were 110 States which were party to the Convention.

The CCW is a framework convention with five protocols, which ban or restrict the use of various types of weapons that are deemed to cause unnecessary suffering or affect either soldiers or civilians indiscriminately. The type of weapons covered include: weapons that leave undetectable fragments in the body (Protocol I), mines, booby-traps and other devices (Protocol II, Amended in 1996), incendiary weapons (Protocol III), blinding laser weapons (Protocol IV), and explosive remnants of war (Protocol V).

List of States Parties and Signatories of the Convention
More information on the UNOG.CH website