Participants at the Sixth Swiss Laboratory Course in Protection against Chemical Weapons, which was held in Spiez, Switzerland from 1 to 5 December 2014.
The Government of Switzerland and the OPCW jointly organised the sixth edition of a laboratory training course on protection against chemical weapons from 1 to 5 December 2014 at the Swiss Army’s ABC Centre of Competence in Spiez. Eleven participants from as many States Parties attended the course.*
“Swiss Lab” is part of a training package in assistance and protection that Switzerland has offered to the OPCW since 1997, which consists of Swiss Basic, Swiss Lab, Swiss Advance and Swiss Exercise. The training package draws on the extensive experience of the Swiss Army’s laboratory specialists in providing technical and personnel support to civilian authorities, and its main purpose is to assist other States Parties in their efforts to establish basic protection capability for the direct benefit of civilian populations.
Swiss Lab provides basic training to experts who are engaged with detection and decontamination activities in their home countries. Participants train with detection and identification equipment that can be used in an emergency to provide simple but reliable qualitative and semi-quantitative analyses of chemical agents in air, soil, water, and food.
* Azerbaijan, Bhutan, Côte d’Ivoire, Dominica, India, Jordan, Madagascar, Malaysia, Montenegro, Tanzania, and Uganda