General Article Countering weapons proliferation

Topic Selected: War and Conflict
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The Chemical Weapons Convention

The UK is one of 188 countries that have ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the first arms-control treaty to introduce a verifiable ban on an entire class of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

The CWC entered into force on 29 April 1997 and all Member States must agree to its provisions, which include:

  • to chemically disarm by destroying all stockpiles of chemical weapons, any facilities which produced them and any old or abandoned chemical weapons from the past;
  • never to develop, produce, stockpile or use chemical weapons;
  • submit regular declarations to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on the production, processing, consumption, and import and export of certain dual-use chemicals;
  • allow the OPCW to carry out routine inspections on their territories.

The OPCW is based in The Hague, and has the mandate to achieve the object and purpose of the CWC, which includes an international verification regime ...

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