Impunity through knowledge management: The legacy of South Africa’s CBW programme
Book review: Brian Rappert and Chandré Gould, The Dis-Eases of Secrecy: Tracing History, Memory & Justice (Jacana Media: Johannesburg, 2017), 261p. It took me almost a year to write this book review. There are reasons why. First, the book is not that easy to read. While one can read it linearly (that is one page after another, as one would normally do), it instead invites readers to follow the logic of the argument, which entails dashing back and forwards from one part in the book to another. Second, the insights are profound, and the reader needs to let them sink …
The Meaning of ‘Emergency Assistance’
Origins and negotiation of Article VII of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention – A new research report Article VII of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) belongs to the more obscure provisions. It reads as follows: Each State Party to this Convention undertakes to provide or support assistance, in accordance with the United Nations Charter, to any Party to the Convention which so requests, if the Security Council decides that such Party has been exposed to danger as a result of violation of the Convention. Since the treaty’s entry into force in 1975, states parties hardly looked at the …
Preparing the 4th CWC Review Conference: Civil Society – 1
Possible Priorities for the Fourth CWC Review Conference and for the OPCW in the Next Five Years Statement by Dr John Hart (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute – SIPRI)* Presented at: Open-Ended Working Group for the Preparation of the Fourth Review Conference (OEWG-RC), Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), The Hague, Netherlands, 16 April 2018 I would like to thank the OPCW and the Open-Ended Working Group for the Preparation of the Fourth Review Conference (OEWG-RC) for the opportunity to participate in today’s meeting. I would also like to thank all others who have been involved in …
Preparing the 4th CWC Review Conference: Education & Outreach
Role of education and outreach in the prevention of the re-emergence of chemical weapons For consideration by the Open-Ended Working Group preparing the Fourth Review Conference of the Chemical Weapons Convention at its ninth meeting Dr Jean Pascal Zanders Chairperson OPCW Advisory Board on Education and Outreach (ABEO) 30 May 2018 [PDF Version] The Advisory Board on Education and Outreach (ABEO) is a subsidiary organ of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Its members, together and individually, represent a wide range of education and outreach (E&O) expertise and experience. Besides strategic and practical advice to the OPCW …
Promoting chemical knowledge
On 2 May the Technical Secretariat of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) organised a workshop relating to its programme to fully implement Article XI of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). I addressed the States Parties in the session on ‘Promoting chemical knowledge’ and focussed on the responsibilities of chemists, both as members of their scientific associations and as individuals, in preventing the misuse of their discipline. Consequences down the road The role of chemists in war is not a new thing. The role of chemists in chemical warfare is of more recent origin. Just over a …
Novichok between opinion and fact – Part 2: When alternative facts become blatant untruths
On 18 April 2018 the Executive Council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) held its 59th meeting, which was wholly dedicated to the assassination attempt with a nerve agent of the Novichok family. The Technical Secretariat presented its classified full ‘Report on Activities Carried out in Support of a Request for Technical Assistance by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (Technical Assistance Visit TAV/02/18)’. A summary released by the Technical Secretariat on 12 April, although lacking in detail, stated that: Two OPCW designated laboratories confirmed that the three hospitalised individuals had been exposed …
What is a chemical weapon? When is chlorine a chemical weapon?
A recurring question in the context of the investigation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) into the use of chlorine in the attack against Douma on 7 April is whether chlorine is actually a chemical weapon (CW). The simple answer is ‘yes’ if the chemical element is released as method of warfare, an act of terrorism, or any other deliberate act intended to harm or kill a person or animal. There are two elements in the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) to bear in mind, namely the definition of a CW and the three Schedules (or lists …
Novichok between opinion and fact – Part 1: Deconstruction of the Russian denial
Since the assassination attempt on Sergei and Yulia Skripal with a nerve agent now just over one month ago, so much has been written about ‘Novichok’; so much has been opined about what ‘Novichok’ is meant to be (if it exists at all); and so much smoke has been spewed about what the identification of ‘Novichok’ suggests about culprits. This blog posting is the first of several to look into a specific aspect of the discussions concerning Novichok in the hope of clarifying where certain positions come from and what factual knowledge exists about this group of nerve agents. Facts …
Geopolitical manoeuvring behind Skripal
On 4 April the Executive Council (EC) of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) will meet in a special session. Russia called the extraordinary meeting. It has been a month now since former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia had been exposed to a nerve agent in Salisbury. The United Kingdom (UK) government identified it as a member of the ‘Novichok’ family, once researched and developed by the Soviet Union. Russia is believed to have continued the programme at least during the first years after the breakup of the USSR. It has never come clear …
Novichok and the Chemical Weapons Convention
Assassinations with nerve agents are rare. Very rare. The reason is simple: other means to eliminate a person are simpler and much more effective. The marginal benefit from using even some of the most toxic substances ever made by man is negligible. What is more, the attempt fails often, as Aum Shinrikyo experienced when trying to take out some of the cult’s enemies with VX before the 1995 sarin attack in the Tokyo underground. Last year’s murder of Kim Jong-nam, half-brother of North-Korean leader Kim Jong-un, also involved VX according to Malaysian authorities. However, the real perpetrator behind the two …