Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)

The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction, more usually called the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) was concluded by the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in 1993 after some 20 years of desultory negotiations.

The political conditions, given urgency as a consequence of Saddam Hussein's development, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons, enabled governments to apply a comprehensive approach to chemical weapons threats by establishing a nondiscriminatory prohibition regime that required all the existing chemical weapons arsenals to be verifiably dismantled and destroyed.

The CWC entered into force in 1997 with the most fully defined and intrusive verification regime ever developed. At time of writing there are 174 states parties to the treaty. A further 12 states have signed but not ratified, while 8 remain outside the treaty.

Coverage in Disarmament Diplomacy

OPCW Director-General reports on Chemical Weapons Destruction, Disarmament News Review, Disarmament Diplomacy, No.91, Summer 2009
The Relevance of Gender for Eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction
by Carol Cohn with Felicity Hill and Sara Ruddick, Disarmament Diplomacy, No.80, Autumn 2005.
Security Council Resolution 1540: WMD and Non-state Trafficking
by Merav Datan, Disarmament Diplomacy, No.79, April/May 2005.
The CWC After Its First Review Conference : Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty? by Alexander Kelle, Disarmament Diplomacy, No. 71, June - July 2003. Background and documents and statements from the Review Conference are available at our CWC archive.

Resources

Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), includes text of the CWC and signatories
Harvard Sussex Program on CBW armament and arms limitation
Monterey Institute of International Studies, CBW Resource page
Strengthening the Chemical Weapons Convention, from the Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford

Back to the Top of the Page