INTERNATIONAL LAW AND CHEMICAL WEAPONS

The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) is a multilateral treaty that bans chemical weapons and requires their destruction within a specified period of time. The treaty is of unlimited duration and is far more comprehensive than the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which outlaws the use but not the possession of chemical weapons.

CWC negotiations started in 1980 in the UN Conference on Disarmament. The convention opened for signature on January 13, 1993, and entered into force on April 29, 1997.

The CWC is implemented by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which is headquartered in The Hague with about 500 employees. The OPCW receives states-parties’ declarations detailing chemical weapons-related activities or materials and relevant industrial activities. After receiving declarations, the OPCW inspects and monitors states-parties’ facilities and activities that are relevant to the convention, to ensure compliance.

The CWC is open to all nations and currently has 188 states-parties.

Syria, North Korea, Angola, Egypt and South Sudan haven’t signed the treaty. Two signatories—Israel and Burma have yet to ratify the convention in their legislatures.

According to OPWC as much as 35% of the world’s known chemical weapons have been destroyed under the treaty.

Syria is bound by the Geneva Protocol of 1925 (Prohibition of the use in war of asphyxiating poisonous or other gases and of bacteriological methods of warfare ) which it did sign in 1968

The use of chemical weapons is a war crime under the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The UN Security Council can refer such war crimes to the ICC even if the persons responsible are citizens of a state that has not ratified the ICC statute.