Chemical weapons prohibition regime

The chemical weapons prohibition regime is much farther developed than its BW counterpart. Yet, over the course of CWC... 

On the preventive side, there is first the need to make the regime against chemical weapons truly universal. This has two aspects the need to attract all states into the CWC regime, and the need to ensure that all States Parties fully implement the treaty. Of particular importance is that States Parties enact and enforce the prohibition of chemical weapons in their penal codes so as to ensure that the international ban on chemical weapons finds expression in national laws and that any violator can be apprehended, prosecuted and punished no matter where an offence is committed. This important relationship between quantitative and qualitative factors in relation to universahty was clearly recognized by the First Review Conference, which called for two Action Plans one on universality and one to ensure full national implementation of the Convention by aU States Parties. ... 

Chemical weapons are totally prohibited under the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention. The General Purpose Criterion ensures that all toxic chemicals, past, present and future, are prohibited unless they are for purposes not prohibited under the Convention. The regime against chemical weapons will become more effective as the Chemical Weapons Convention approaches universality and international initiatives in regard to toxic chemicals become more widely applied throughout the world. National measures to ensure that toxic chemicals do not present a risk to health and safety can and should be harnessed to ensure effective implementation of the obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention to ensure that such chemicals are only used for purposes permitted under the Convention. 

Last, but certainly not least, the recently renewed interest in so-called non-lethal CW threatens to undermine the current prohibition regime and calls into question the viability of any future CW control efforts. If there was the need for a wake-up call to raise awareness of this problem, this was most certainly provided by the use of a fen-tanyl-derivative - as it was called by the Russian authorities - that was used to end the Moscow theatre hostage-taking in fall of 2002.52 However, this incident represents just the tip of the iceberg, as more states than just Russia are interested in utilizing so-called non-lethal chemical weapons in a number of police and military scenarios other than war. Certainly the US military shows a strong interest in developing this kind of capability.53... 

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