Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons
arms control treaty
The United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW or CCWC), concluded at Geneva on October 10, 1980, and entered into force in December 1983, seeks to prohibit or restrict the use of certain conventional weapons which are considered excessively injurious or whose effects are indiscriminate. The full title of the treaty is "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." The convention covers land mines, booby traps, incendiary devices, blinding laser weapons and clearance of explosive remnants of war.
Objectives
The aim of the convention and its protocols is to provide new rules for the protection of civilians from injury by weapons that are used in armed conflicts and also to protect combatants from unnecessary suffering. The convention covers fragments that are undetectable in the human body by X-rays, landmines and booby traps, and incendiary weapons, blinding laser weapons and the clearance of explosive remnants of war. Parties to the convention must take legislative and other actions to ensure compliance with the convention.
CCWC includes five protocols dealing with specific weapons. The convention and its annexed protocols apply in all types of armed conflict, both international and non-international. This was not the case when the convention was first adopted, but the scope was expanded by two conferences in 1996 and 2001. Some provisions also apply after open hostilities has ended, such as the rules in protocols II and V about minimizing the dangers from mines and other ordnance.
CCWC lacks verification and enforcement mechanisms and spells out no formal process for resolving compliance concerns.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons” is arms control treaty. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Convention, Certain and Conventional, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “arms control treaty” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q925836. The Library of Congress control number is no97015735. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1980, 1983, 1996 and 2001.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons primary sources, Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons archive and Convention research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.