As delivered on 18 September 2023, The Hague, Netherlands
Dear participants,
Colleagues,
It is a great pleasure to welcome you to the Fourteenth edition of the Asser Institute’s training programme on Disarmament and Non-proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction. I would like to thank the organisers for their commitment to this annual programme, and the presenters for contributing their time and wisdom.
The OPCW greatly values its long-standing cooperation with the Asser Institute on this initiative. Empowering early and mid-career professionals, such as yourselves, to gain a greater understanding of key issues in today’s disarmament discussions is vital in ensuring continued progress on arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation.
This is more important now than ever before.
Dear participants,
International efforts to prohibit weapons of mass destruction are crucial for global peace and security. These weapons have great destructive capabilities that can result in catastrophic humanitarian and environmental harm.
The clear threat to humanity has long been recognised by the international community. In fact, the very first resolution of the UN General Assembly in 1946 called for the elimination of all types of weapons of mass destruction.
By pursuing disarmament and non-proliferation through dialogue, confidence-building and negotiation of agreements, the international community seeks to prevent conflict, as well as to foster a climate of trust, cooperation, and mutual security. As such, disarmament is not simply a lofty goal, but rather an indispensable tool for keeping the world safe.
However, those discussions have never been more difficult than they are now. The conflict in Ukraine has shaken the foundations of the international system and has increased fears of the use of weapons of mass destruction.
At the same time, new technologies are testing the international community’s ability to curb proliferation and deter use. They are lowering the threshold for acquiring weapons of mass destruction and improving their means of delivery.
Despite this serious situation, multilateral efforts to ban these weapons are at a standstill. Beginning with the failure to adopt a verification system for the Biological Weapons Convention in 2001 and the termination of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, there has been a steady loss or weakening of crucial international, regional, and bilateral instruments.
Key agreements concluded during the Cold War such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty have been terminated. More recent ones, like the New START Treaty, have been suspended.
In addition, the disarmament machinery, which was designed and constructed to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction and address the strategic causes of warfare, is paralysed. The Conference on Disarmament, which negotiated several landmark treaties in the past, has been unable to undertake substantive work for over 25 years. Even the last agreement produced by the Conference, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, is still no closer to entering into force since it opened for signature in 1996.
There has also been a deterioration of confidence-building instruments aimed at enhancing strategic stability. The withdrawal of major states from the Open Skies Treaty, for instance, has impacted transparency which could lead to misunderstandings and escalation.
But there has also been some progress. Two years ago, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force. But it needs to be pointed out that none of the nuclear possessor states were involved in its negotiation or have signed the treaty.
Dear Participants,
The situation that I have just described is one that should evoke deep concern. It is against this backdrop of a complicated and challenging global landscape that the OPCW must oversee the implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Over the past 26 years, the OPCW has been at the core of global efforts to eradicate chemical weapons and promote the peaceful uses of chemistry.
One of the OPCW’s most significant achievements is its endeavour to make the Convention universal. With 193 States Parties, the CWC is the most universally accepted disarmament treaty. This underscores the commitment of the international community to eliminate these devastating weapons and preventing their return.
A cornerstone of the OPCW’s mission has been monitoring the destruction of declared chemical weapons stockpiles. In fact, this year the Organisation hit a critical milestone when it verified in July that the last possessor State Party, the United States, had irreversibly destroyed its last chemical munition.
This was a landmark achievement for the international community and a historic moment for the OPCW. Moreover, the end of stockpile destruction was a critical step towards realising the Convention’s primary objective: “to exclude completely the possibility of the use of chemical weapons”.
Confidence in compliance with the CWC’s objectives is built upon a robust verification system. Through a combination of routine inspections, declaration and reporting obligations, and extensive data collection, the OPCW’s international verification regime remains a gold standard among multilateral disarmament agreements. To ensure industrial activities are exclusively for non-prohibited purposes, to date the OPCW has carried out around 4,400 inspections across more than 80 Member States.
In addition to its disarmament and non-proliferation efforts, the OPCW has made significant contributions to the promotion of the peaceful uses of chemistry. The Organisation actively promotes international cooperation and capacity building among its Member States to assist their technological and economic development.
Our activities related to assistance and protection provide our Member States with the necessary training and resources to effectively respond to chemical attacks and incidents. And we support our Member States in implementing the Convention at the national level as the best defence against the use of chemical weapons by anyone.
For its contribution to global peace, the OPCW has been recognised by the international community. In 2013, we received the Nobel Peace Prize for our extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons.
Despite the long strides that we have taken to abolish chemicals as weapons and the successes we have recorded, the work of the OPCW is far from over. As the disarmament phase of our mission has ended, we are now intensifying our activities to prevent the re-emergence of chemical weapons.
The Organisation must tackle several existing challenges to our traditional core mission, as well as a host of new and emerging ones that will test its effectiveness.
Dear participants,
Of these existing challenges, none is more serious than the use in recent years of chemical weapons. This is a direct challenge to the global norm against chemical weapons, but the OPCW has responded to ensure it remains robust.
In Syria we have observed some of the most flagrant violations of the norm. Next week we will mark ten years since the adoption of Security Council resolution 2118, which launched the OPCW activities in that country to destroy its chemical weapons programme. From September 2013 to January 2016, we were able to oversee the removal of all declared weapons from Syrian territory and verify their destruction – some 1,300 metric tonnes.
Our mission in Syria continues to this day through several OPCW mechanisms. Questions over the accuracy and completeness of Syria’s initial declaration of its weapons programme as well as persistent and credible reports of chemical weapons use are still being addressed. The OPCW has taken concrete steps through decisions of its policy-making organs to demand that Syria fully declare and destroy all its chemical weapons and production facilities, decisions that the Secretariat continues to implement.
Regrettably, there have been other serious incidents in Iraq, Malaysia, United Kingdom and in Russia. In all of these, the OPCW has been requested to take action. In the 2018 poisonings in Salisbury and Amesbury and the 2020 case of Alexei Navalny, the OPCW provided technical assistance to the United Kingdom and Germany, on their request, regarding the identification of the warfare agents employed.
In Ukraine, there have been serious threats of chemical weapons use. On request, the Secretariat has been supporting Ukraine’s preparedness and response capabilities to chemical attacks and incidents. We have given Ukrainian first responders and other specialists training in chemical incident investigations.
A further challenge that the Organisation has been dealing with for a long period of time is the danger posed by chemical terrorism. It does not require much to imagine the potential death, panic, and disruption the release of a lethal gas could have in a crowded public area. This is exactly what happened in the Tokyo subway during rush-hour in March 1995.
That terrorist attack, which was carried out using the nerve agent sarin, highlighted that the threat posed by non-State actors is very real.
More recently, there have been other well-documented instances of use of chemical weapons by the terrorist group ISIL in Syria and Iraq.
To counter chemical terrorism, the OPCW is working with its member states to build capacities within their national jurisdictions to prevent the diversion of toxic chemicals as well as to effectively respond to emergency situations. We are also working with other international organisations to provide more holistic and coherent support for addressing this issue. Most prominently, the OPCW has been a signatory of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact since 2018, through which we have cooperated with several other bodies.
The threat of terrorists obtaining and using toxic chemicals as weapons are exacerbated by another two trends that are important to the OPCW. These are the rapid advances in science and technology, coupled with the ever-expanding globalisation of chemical industry.
To be clear, these two trends bring broad, life-changing benefits to societies and can provide solutions to urgent issues. Nonetheless, when employed for hostile purposes, the consequences of new technologies are alarming. Artificial intelligence is a good example.
Last year it was reported that scientists were able to manipulate an AI program designed to develop new drugs to find new possible chemical warfare agents. In the space of six hours AI came up with 40,000 highly toxic compounds that could be re-purposed as chemical weapons.
Changes in the global chemical industry also require our attention. As it continues to expand in size and grow in technical sophistication, the industry presents a nuanced set of issues for the OPCW especially regarding verification. This underlines the dangers of dual-use technologies, and the need for the OPCW to keep up with new scientific breakthroughs and trends. More importantly, it is vital that the Organisation is ready to adopt measures to mitigate these risks to the Convention’s implementation and support the States Parties in this regard.
To deal with these and other challenges to the Convention, the OPCW has begun a process of adaptation to strengthen its readiness within this new post-disarmament era. Key to this process is the Organisation’s new Centre for Chemistry and Technology, which you will be visiting this Thursday.
This new facility, which was inaugurated in May this year, is an important upgrade for the OPCW’s research, operational, analytical and capacity building capabilities. In essence it will assist the OPCW to remain an agile, capable, and responsive organisation operating across the full spectrum of chemical security issues now and in the future.
Last, but not least, is the need to bolster national implementation among our Member States. At present, approximately two-thirds of the States Parties have reported legislation covering all the required initial measures to put into effect the Convention. The OPCW is providing support to close this implementation gap, but further efforts are necessary.
Dear participants,
As I mentioned at the beginning of my lecture, international efforts to rid the world of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons are under unprecedented pressures. These pressures and concerns are being felt in disarmament forums and institutions across the globe, including here in The Hague.
Accordingly, the disarmament organisations such as the OPCW must find ways to adapt its work to these new circumstances and make certain the gains we have already achieved are not reversed.
We need to be acutely aware of where the dangers and risks of weapons of mass destruction intersect with new and emerging technologies. And we need to cultivate new methods to reinvigorate the disarmament and non-proliferation architecture.
Unless we can fully engage with the broad range of different issues and stakeholders, finding workable and sustainable solutions will be impossible. I hope that the knowledge you will glean over the coming days will enrich your understanding of these complex problems and challenges.
As the next generation of practitioners, experts, and decision-makers, I also encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity to expand your networks and build connections for future cooperation. I wish you all the best for this week.
Thank you.