Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons(OPCW)

OPCW has been working since the 1990s as the body that implements the Chemical Weapons Convention, the first international treaty to outlaw an entire class of weapons.

The convention prohibits the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention, transfer or use of chemical weapons. It came into force in 1997 and has been ratified by 189 states.

The OPCW is an Intergovernmental Organization located in The Hague,Netherlands and has 189 member states and is led by General Director Ahmet Üzümcü.

The organisation promotes and verifies the adherence to the Chemical Weapons Convention  which prohibits of the use of chemical weapons and requires their destruction

The verification consists both of evaluation of declarations by members states and on-site inspections. 

Of those, seven — Albania, India, Iraq, Libya, Russia and the United States, along with a country identified by the OPCW only as "a State Party" but widely believed to be South Korea — have declared stockpiles of chemical weapons. These include mustard gas and nerve agents like sarin and VX. 

The OPCW has conducted more than 5,000 inspections in 86 countries.

According to its statistics, 57,740 metric tons, or 81.1 percent, of the world's declared stockpile of chemical agents have been verifiably destroyed.

Albania, India and "a third country" — believed to be South Korea — have completed destruction of their declared stockpiles. An OPCW report released earlier this year said the United States had destroyed about 90 percent of its stockpile, Russia had destroyed 70 percent and Libya 51 percent.

Thirteen OPCW members have also declared a total of 70 chemical weapons production facilities



The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons awarded the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has been awarded the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize

Awarding the prestigious medal the Nobel Norwegian Nobel Committee said -

"Recent events in Syria, where chemical weapons have again been put to use, have underlined the need to enhance the efforts to do away with such weapons. Some states are still not members of the OPCW. Certain states have not observed the deadline, which was April 2012, for destroying their chemical weapons. This applies especially to the USA and Russia."