Participants at the first meeting of training centres for assistance and protection, which was held in Spiez, Switzerland from 9 to 11 July 2013.
A first meeting of training centres for assistance and protection under Article X of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) took place in Spiez from 9 to 11 July 2013. The meeting served as a forum for discussion among States Parties that provide such training in cooperation with the OPCW. Representatives of training centres from 13 State Parties* were present and participated in the active discussions.
The meeting was an opportunity for national experts in assistance-and-protection training to review the relevant OPCW activities that have been conducted in recent years. They discussed the harmonization of training curricula related to Article X, development and use of e-learning modules, cooperation among training providers, and further development of the regional concept of CWC Assistance-and-Protection centres. The meeting was particularly helpful in gaining an understanding of the nature and scope of the training provided by each of the national centres, which in turn presents opportunities to begin leveraging indigenous expertise across a variety of regional and sub-regional training courses offered by the OPCW.
Speaking after the meeting Mr Mathias Halter, Head of the Swiss Arms Control and Disarmament Policy/International Relations Defence, said that the gathering of international experts in Spiez was a positive step towards States Parties cooperating with one another in the area of assistance and protection as envisaged in Article X of the Convention, and that future cooperation would be essential to ensure ongoing success.
* Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, China, Czech Republic, Finland, Pakistan, Poland, Qatar, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Switzerland, Ukraine