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Chemical Weapons Convention enters into force

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2010

Peter Herby*
Affiliation:
ICRC Legal Division

Extract

The Convention on the prohibition of the development, production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons and on their destruction, of 13 January 1993 (Chemical Weapons Convention - CWC) enters into force on 29 April 1997, following the deposit by Hungary on 31 October 1996 of the 65th instrument of ratification. This landmark Convention complements and reinforces the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons by also banning the development, production and stockpiling of chemical weapons — as well as their use — and requiring the destruction of existing stockpiles. The 1925 Geneva Protocol was adopted following a dramatic appeal against chemical warfare by the ICRC at the end of the First World War. The Biological Weapons Convention, in force since 1975, has outlawed the development, production and stockpiling of these weapons.

Type
Reports and Documents
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 1997

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References

1 Protocol for the prohibition of the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of bacteriological methods of warfare, of 17 June 1925.

2 Reprinted in Mirimanoff, J., “The Red Cross and biological and chemical weapons”, IRRC, No. 111, 06 1970, pp. 301302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar