The Convention aims to eliminate an entire category of weapons of mass destruction by prohibiting the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention, transfer or use of chemical weapons by States Parties. States Parties, in turn, must take the steps necessary to enforce that prohibition in respect of persons (natural or legal) within their jurisdiction. All States Parties have agreed to chemically disarm by destroying any stockpiles of chemical weapons they may hold and any facilities which produced them, as well as any chemical weapons they abandoned on the territory of other States Parties in the past. States Parties have also agreed to create a verification regime for certain toxic chemicals and their precursors (listed in Schedules 1, 2 and 3 in the Annex on Chemicals) in order to ensure that such chemicals are only used for purposes not prohibited under the Convention.
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Sets out all of the detailed procedures to be followed by the States Parties and by OPCW inspection teams during verification/inspection activities at chemical weapons facilities or sites and industrial facilities
The entry into force of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) on the 29th of April 1997 was a landmark success in the field of arms control and disarmament. Fig. 1 The CWC outlaws the use, production and stockpiling of chemical weapons and bans or regulates precursors. A signature element of the CWC is the complex and far-reaching verification mechanism that is implemented by the Technical Secretariat of the Organisation for the Prohibitions for Chemical Weapons (OPCW) located in The Hague in the Netherlands. This includes declaration requirements for existing stockpiles, precursors and production facilities and their subsequent destruction under constant supervision of OPCW inspectors. Additional requirements include declaration of certain industrial sites and activities, inspections of industry sites as confidence-building measures and the requirement for state parties to the CWC to implement national legislation. In the case of a suspected violation of the CWC, the policy-making organs of the OPCW can invoke several mechanisms, including challenge inspections or investigations of alleged use. The full text of the CWC, the schedules of chemicals and the verification annex as well as detailed information on the organisational structure of the OPCW and its latest activities can be accessed on the website at
Recent events have shown that the use of chemical weapons is still a real possibility and present danger. Analytical chemistry has come a long way in its support of a universal and global ban on these weapons, and we hope that the readers of this topical collection will gain new insights into a field that practically contributes to global arms control and disarmament.
Schedule 1 chemicals are particularly hazardous and pose a high risk. They have been developed, produced, stockpiled and used as chemical weapons and have little or no use for activities not prohibited by the CWC.
It is fundamental to the aims of the CWC and the Schedule 1 licensing regime that chemicals which can be or have been weaponised should fall within its scope, in order to enable the UKNA to effectively control the possession and use of such chemicals in the UK. We also want to ensure that our licensing system is applied in a technically consistent way, so chemicals with the same structures, names and toxic properties as chemicals explicitly listed in Schedule 1 are licensable, even if they have different CAS numbers. The UK considers the molecular structure of a chemical in order to determine whether it is covered by Schedule 1 and therefore isotopically labelled analogues, stereoisomers (both optical and geometric), and corresponding salts are licensable.
Kinetic energy weapons systems include but are not limited to launch systems and subsystems capable of accelerating masses larger than 0.1g to velocities in excess of 1.6 km/s, in single or rapid fire modes, using methods such as: Electromagnetic, electrothermal, plasma, light gas, or chemical. This does not include launch systems and subsystems used for research and testing facilities subject to the EAR, which are controlled on the CCL under ECCN 2B232.
(i) Modeling or simulation tools, including software controlled in paragraph (m) of this category, for chemical or biological weapons design, development, or employment developed or produced under a Department of Defense contract or other funding authorization (e.g., the Department of Defense's HPAC, SCIPUFF, and the Joint Effects Model (JEM)).
There are advantages to such a course of action. Firstly, it would reinforce the central role of the CWC in dealing with violations of the chemical weapons prohibition. Western demands on Russia to acknowledge the findings of the OPCW and United Nations investigations in Syria lose credibility if CWC procedures are not applied in this case. Notwithstanding requests for clarification under the CWC, London would still be free to demand clarification by direct channels or to impose sanctions.
The German High Command sanctioned the use of gas in the hope that this new weapon would bring a decisive victory, breaking the enduring stalemate of trench warfare. However, their faith in this wonder weapon was limited. Surprised by the apparent success of the attack, and having no plan to send a large offensive force in after the gas, the Germans were unable to take advantage of the situation. Within days, both armies once again faced each other from the same opposing fortifications. The attack that spring day, nonetheless, marked a turning point in military history, as it is recognized as the first successful use of lethal chemical weapons on the battlefield.
Chemical warfare had begun in a tentative way before Ypres with the French use of tear gas grenades in 1914 and early 1915. Similarly, the British began developing a range of nonlethal chemical weapons meant to harass enemy troops. The Germans started experimental work on chemical agents in late 1914 at the suggestion of University of Berlin chemist and Nobel laureate Walther Nernst.21 This early research quickly produced an effective tear gas artillery shell. Although the Germans fared no better than the French with tear gas as a debilitating agent, German chemists, now with a formal program led by Fritz Haber, continued to work on the chemical weapons problem. By 1915, scientists at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute had developed an effective chlorine gas weapon. By placing chlorine into specially designed cylinders, chlorine gas could be discharged in a dense cloud that eventually settled into enemy trenches. Interestingly, the German High Command envisioned gas as an effective tool to draw soldiers out of their trenches so as to kill or wound them with conventional weapons rather than as a lethal weapon.22
This political ambivalence was reflective of the ongoing debates about chemical weapons research and production that waxed and waned in the United States over the rest of the century. During World War II, for instance, the US military was vocal about its avoidance of the deployment or use of poison gas. At the same time, however, chemical weapons were a mainstay of the Army Air Corps strategic bombing campaigns in both the European and Pacific theaters.69 In less than 3 years, more than 220 000 tons of chemically based munitions such as napalm and magnesium were dropped on civilian targets in both Germany and Japan, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. The air campaigns in World War II also reflect the disturbing shift in the rise of civilian casualties during war from all types of weapons, a trend that has increased steadily from the 1930s until the present day.70
The commitment to a host of long-term and large-scale military research programs during the Cold War, involving numerous weapons systems, provided an institutional and financial impetus for work on a variety of chemical weapons. In an effort to secure their position as global superpowers throughout the Cold War, the United States, the Soviet Union, and their various North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Warsaw Pact allies developed new chemical weapons programs based in part on German nerve agents like sarin. To expedite their search for new agents, the United States, Canada, and Britain entered a Tripartite Agreement as early as 1946 to share research on offensive and defensive aspects of chemical weapons. Many chemical weapons research programs (such as the US program) often worked in tandem with nominally smaller but no less sophisticated biological weapons programs, which added a wealth of data on complex meteorological and delivery system problems. Over time, the increasing sophistication of mainstream chemical and biological weapons in the early postwar period led to the development of new generations of nerve agents.71
By the mid-1950s, the United States was searching for more powerful nerve agents; these efforts culminated in the development of VX, which was 3 times as lethal as sarin and had the additional tactical utility of battlefield persistence. The United States continued to develop traditional chemical (and nerve) weapons well into the late 1960s. At that time, changes in national security policy, coupled with the ongoing military situation in Vietnam, saw a shift toward partial disarmament of some types of WMDs with a simultaneous expansion of research and development programs for new weapons.
By the late 1980s, in response to pressure from the Soviet Union and various NATO allies, the United States began the wholesale destruction of much of its chemical weapons stockpile (at places such as the army arsenal at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and the Johnson Atoll in the South Pacific) in an effort to disarm, as well as destroy older weapons that had become unstable. Research continued in the United States on various chemical weapons systems through the 1990s and on into the new millennium. At present, the United States maintains a large and sophisticated arsenal of chemical and nerve agents for tactical and strategic use.72 2ff7e9595c
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