Verification and monitoring of chemical weapons precursors
The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention has 192 States Parties as of October 2015. One signatory has yet to ratify. The treaty has been a multilateral success. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has been instrumental in the verified destruction of 90% of the world’s declared stockpile of more than seventy thousand metric tonnes of chemical agents. Since the entry into force of the treaty, about six thousand inspections have taken place at chemical weapon-related and other industrial sites on the territory of almost ninety parties to the convention.
Preventing the re-emergence of chemical weapons requires a different form of governance than that needed to verify the destruction of chemical stockpiles. The programme will engage with the OPCW, focussing on the facilitation of this transition in the organisation’s mission while, also, proposing ways to strengthen investigatory mechanisms for alleged chemical weapons use.