Geneva Protocols

The aim of the European Solvents Directive is to assist Europe in reaching the reductions in VOC emissions that it has to make under the 1991 Geneva Protocol. The VOC Directive contains a solvent consumption threshold for the vehicle refinishing industry of 500kg solvent per year. To ensure that small refinish shops are covered, a product-based Directive, where the VOC content of paints used in the sector would be regulated, may be introduced. The current situation in the US regarding VOC limits on coatings used in the architectural and industrial maintenance sectors is examined. 

Army. This kinship was an important factor in the failure in 1926 of the United States Senate to ratify the Geneva Protocol prohibiting chemical warfare (7). 

Attempts to ban chemical warfare always fell short of success. Even though the United States signed the 1925 Geneva Protocol, the Senate would not ratify it. 

Precaution became an increasing national concern. The Italian use of mustard gas was a further harbinger of concerns that steadily increased, not least because Italy was a signatory to the Geneva Protocol. 

The United States had never ratified the Geneva Protocol, but nevertheless, President Roosevelt considered poison gas a barbarous weapon. Indeed, he had no intention, unlike his British counterpart, of authorising its use, much to the disappointment of the American Chemical Warfare Service. The American chemical weapons programme only thrived because of the fear of Japanese chemical warfare efforts indeed, American newspapers often printed reports of Japanese use of chemical warfare against the Chinese. Despite his reservations, Roosevelt issued a... 

Although President Nixon had called in 1969 for the ratification of the Geneva Protocol, it was not until 1974 that it was finally ratified through the US Senate and President Ford officially signed it on 22 January 1975. He did, however, exempt riot control agents and herbicides from inclusion in the agreement. 

It is vital to realise that the continued use of chemical weapons in the present conflict increases the risk of their use in future conflicts... In our view, only concerted efforts at the political level can be effective in ensuring that all the signatories of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 abide by their obligations. Otherwise if the Protocol is irreparably weakened after 60 years of general international respect, this may lead, in the future, to the world facing the spectre of the threat of chemical weapons.31... 

The ban on the use of chemical weapons, as codified in the 1925 Geneva Protocol, was considered to constitute international law, applicable to all states. Yugoslavia had ratified the protocol and at no time indicated any desire to repudiate its treaty obligations. In earlier years certain countries, including the United States which used massive quantities of tear gas in the Vietnam War, maintained the protocol did not ban the use of riot control agents. However, incapacitating agents, like BZ, were not included in this apparent exception. 

Nevertheless, it was events in Kurdistan in particular which fully illustrated both the ambiguity of what was banned and the absence of verification measures under the Geneva Protocol. Only use of chemical weapons was banned, not possession. In 1972 the United Nations General Assembly had adopted the Convention of the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Biological Weapons. Chemical weapons fell outside this convention and by 1988 it became clear that a chemical weapons treaty was urgently needed to place effective constraints on the proliferation of these weapons worldwide. 

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