Geneva Protocol effectiveness

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... 

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. 

Chapter 3 is concerned with the period between the two world wars. It describes the ways in which public opinion in the field of chemical warfare was aroused after the experience of the First World War, and to some extent how public opinion was then exploited. The chapter considers some of the effects of this including how it stimulated the negotiation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, one of the most important pieces of conventional international law prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons. The chapter also considers the national policies and programmes relating to chemical warfare in the inter-war period and examines important chemical warfare discoveries in these decades. 

Clearly the threat of chemical warfare is still very real, and research continues into defensive technology such as nerve gas vaccines and chemical sensors. The Chemical Weapons Convention came into effect in 1997 and it has taken the Geneva Protocol... 

This chapter examines the prohibitions in the relevant treaties - the Geneva Protocol of 1925, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention - and concludes that chemical weapons are totally prohibited. Consideration is given to the risk of use of chemical weapons posed in the 21st Century, both by states and by other organizations and individuals, such as terrorists, and to how these risks can be countered by the effective implementation of the treaties. 

The intricate relationship between the CWC and the Geneva Protocol may best be illustrated in respect of three problems first, the situations to which the respective instraments apply second, the agents covered and third, the effect of the CWC on the reservations made to the Geneva Protocol. 

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