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 (CCW) is an important instrument of international humanitarian law that helps to reduce civilian suffering in conflict zones. It was concluded in Geneva on 10 October 1980 and entered into force in December 1983. For the former Czechoslovakia, the Convention entered into force on 2 December 1983, and the Czech Republic ratified it on 20 February 1993.

The Convention is complemented by five Additional Protocols, the first three of which were adopted together with the Convention:

• - Protocol I prohibits the use of weapons that injure by undetectable projectiles;
• - Amended Protocol II restricts the use of certain mines, booby traps and other devices;
• - Protocol III prohibits the use of incendiary weapons;
• - Protocol IV prohibits the use of blinding laser weapons;
• - Protocol V, approved in 2003, concerns explosive remnants of war.

The latter Protocol V mandates the registration of all unexploded ordnance, the marking of unexploded remnants of war sites and their pyrotechnical clearance. Amended Protocol II is the only instrument of international humanitarian law (IHL) targeting mines other than anti-personnel mines (MOTAPM) that threaten civilians, even if they are designed to destroy vehicles. According to this Protocol, all mines that do not have self-destruct and self-detection devices should be destroyed. The Czech Republic ratified Protocol II in August 1998 and had already destroyed these types of anti-personnel mines by that date.

Czechia has long advocated the universalization of the Convention and its Protocols. At the same time, it advocates that any new treaty instruments eventually negotiated in relation to conventional weapons should form additional protocols to the CCW.