Palestine: From a ‘will-be’ party to the CWC to a ‘would-have-been’?
Something really remarkable happened in the first two weeks of 2018. On 2 January, quite out of the blue came the notification by UN Secretary-General António Guterres that the State of Palestine had deposited its instrument of accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). It was to become the 193rd state party on 28 January, thirty days after having submitted the document (29 December). Indeed, ‘was’. Guterres formally informed UN members on 11 January that Palestine had withdrawn its instrument of accession three days earlier. States withdrawing from a disarmament or arms control treaty is extremely rare. But it does …
The OPCW and the industry: Are there any obligations?
Opinion by Prof Benjamin Ruiz Loyola, Faculty of Chemistry, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Member of the OPCW Advisory Board on Education and Outreach (ABEO) The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is an organization devoted to the destruction of all the chemical weapons over our world, to prevent the reemergence of this weapons of mass destruction and to prevent the abuse or misuse of dual-use chemical compounds or technologies. This activities of the OPCW are determined by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), an international agreement signed and ratified by 192 countries (and one that in …