Inspections declarations

Sampling Procedures for Inspection by Attributes - Part 4 Procedures for Assessment of Declared Quality Levels , ISO 2859-4 2002, International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Geneva, Switzerland, 2002. 

The total number of declared sites (5947) which are to be regularly or randomly inspected shows the high burden of expected verification activities. At this stage of implementation, the verification activities have been obviously concentrated on storage and destruction, and in industry on facilities producing scheduled chemicals. The number of inspections totalled 1936 at 784 sites in 67 countries till December 10, 2004. 

The quality of a ceramic sample is a function of the degree to which it consists of the desired product. An essential tool for the characterization of a polycrystalline sample is powder X-ray diffraction. The powder pattern is a fingerprint of the sample. For a sample to be declared single phase, all low angle peaks (below 60 20 for CuKq radiation) which are above the noise must be accounted for. Powder X-ray diffraction is often unable to see impurity phases present below the 5% level. Visual inspection (using a microscope)... 

The Supreme Court disagreed in an order delivered by Justice Antonin Scalia. The opinion observed that the Court had previously declared that a mere visual inspection from outside is not a search in the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. However, in Katz v. United States (1967), the Court ruled that use of a listening device attached to the outside of a phone booth did violate the Fourth Amendment because the user of the booth has a reasonable expectation of privacy. Similarly, aerial surveillance of a house was not considered a search because a resident has no reasonable expectation that the outside and surroundings of a house will not be seen from the air. 

This decree is an international consensus to recognise studies carried- out in different countries. Any laboratory wanting to conform to GLP can ask for an inspection. If it passes the inspection, the laboratory is declared GLP compliant, which allows it to operate within the scope of the European community regulations. However, GLP compliance does not give a laboratory a label of quality that is valid for all future operations. 

The guarantee of conformity to the essential requirements of the MDD is provided by the interaction between the manufacturer and a third party, the notified body. The notified bodies are organizations that are recognized by the member states to conduct device evaluations and inspections of the quality systems of the various manufacturers. The manufacturers are held responsible for the quality, safety, and effectiveness of their medical devices. This is enforced through the manufacturer s written declaration of conformity and commitment to keep all technical information available for inspection by the notified bodies and national authorities. 

The foundation of the CWC s inspection activities was based around the declaration by member states of their chemical weapons capabilities and activities. Nations with chemical warfare programmes were required to declare their production, storage and destruction facilities, which would then receive top monitoring priority. Nevertheless, the CWC did allow states to maintain research programmes to ensure the integrity of defensive equipment such as gas masks and gas detectors, but these activities were also to be closely monitored since they involved work with the chemical agents listed on Schedule l.9 Otherwise, all other warfare agents, mustard gas, Lewisite, soman, sarin, tabun, VX and the capability to produce them were to be eliminated under the watchful eyes of international inspectors (Table 8.1).10 The convention thus defined chemical weapons as any toxic chemical, or its precursors, intended for purposes other than those not prohibited under this convention for... 

Until member states make the effort to review declarations and demand access to the final reports from inspections, they will be in no position to ascertain whether other states have accurately declared their military and civilian chemical capabilities. Nonetheless, the declarations are reviewed avidly by those member states that take chemical weapons seriously. The CWC denies access to the raw inspection reports, but not to compilations of data from them, which, again, are read avidly. However, given... 

The OPCW performs verification activities on a regular basis and can conduct challenge inspections. The purpose is to verify that the SPs fulfill their obligations under the CWC. Regular verification includes assessment of the declarations made by the SPs by conducting on-site inspections of declared sites. 

The role of S A at a Chemical Weapons Destruction Facility (CWDF) is different than in other types of inspections. At a CWDF, the main objective of S A is to confirm the identity of a particular chemical that has been declared, that is, the declared chemical agent that is being destroyed. Further,... 

Sampling and analysis (S A) during inspections is one of the verification tools provided for by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) (1). Chemical analysis of a sample is the only direct and scientific (and not only circumstantial) tool to confirm the presence of a chemical substance. The presence of a declared chemical in a declared place at a declared time and in declared quantities confirms the declaration provided by a State Party to the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons). The actual or past presence of a chemical, which should not be at the inspected site according to the declarations, or, which has... 

The Greek letter alpha a is used to represent this small residual risk of a false positive. Alpha obviously depends upon what confidence interval is inspected. In the case of the standard 95 per cent Cl, the remaining risk is 100 — 95 = 5 per cent. However, if we were particularly anxious to avoid the risk of a false positive, we might calculate a 98 per cent Cl and only declare a positive finding if that wider interval excluded zero. In that case alpha would be only 2 per cent. 

Notice that, in this case, it is the lower limit of the Cl that is used to make the decision - if it is above zero, the result is significant. If we had been testing for a reduction in clearance, we would have inspected the upper limit and the result would have been declared significant, if that was below zero. 

Declaration of the body issuing the certificate This is to certify that the products designated above have been obtained in accordance with the rules of production and on inspection of the organic production method, as set out and monitored by the control organisation mentioned in box 4. ... 

These notified bodies have introduced a type of certificate without any legal status the component certificate, which is marked by a U following the certificate number. This document acts as a working instrument for a simpler handling of components like conductor bushings, terminal blocks or inspection windows. The notified body issuing such a component certificate herewith declares the conformity with the relevant Harmonized European Norm and the relevant type tests. Other notified bodies accept this document without asking for renewed type tests. In this way, components can be handled in a very efficient... 

States Parties are required to designate or establish a National Authority to ensure the effective implementation of the CWC. The National Authority makes the initial and subsequent annual declaration on chemical weapon stocks or facilities, coordinates and participates in the receipt of OPCW inspections of industrial and military sites, participates in assisting and protecting member states under threat or actual chemical attack, and promotes the peaceful use of chemicals. The National Authority is thus the focal point in a country s interaction with other countries and the OPCW. The Technical Secretariat of the OPCW helps in the provision of advice, assistance and capacity development of relevant skills and expertise in the staff of national authorities. The secretariat also hosts and coordinates regular meetings of the national authorities from all over the world. 

The six countries to have declared chemical weapons are required to destroy some 8.5 million items, including munitions and containers. As of April 2005,167 countries had joined the OPCW. ° All declared chemical weapons production capacity had been inactivated, with two-thirds of the declared facilities either verifiably destroyed or converted for peaceful purposes. With respect to chemical weapons, the inventory of all declared stockpiles had been completed and verified, but less than one-quarter of the declared 8.5 million chemical weapon munitions had been verifiably destroyed. Of the 70,000 tonnes of declared chemical weapons agents, only about 15 per cent had been verifiably destroyed just a tiny drop of nerve agent the size of a pin head can kill an adult within minutes of exposure. Almost 5,000 industrial facilities around the world are liable for inspection the OPCW had conducted almost 2,000 inspections at 170 military and 600 industrial sites in 68 countries. 

The destruction of these declared stockpiles has made considerable progress. There have been difficulties and delays, but there is no doubting the full commitment of all possessor States Parties to complete the destruction of all their chemical weapons within the time frames established by the Convention. Furthermore, facilities that were used in the past to produce chemical weapons are being destroyed or converted for legitimate purposes. Destruction as well as conversion operations are subject to systematic verification by the OPCW, which has conducted more than 1,800 inspections, in 65 States Parties, since the beginning of inspections in 1997. More than 1,000 of these inspections were conducted at CW facilities (CW storage facilities, former CW production facilities, destruction operations, and locations where old and/or abandoned chemical weapons are being recovered and destroyed). Some... 

Another reason had to do with the principle of equal treatment of States Parties. It had become apparent that many States Parties had difficulties identifying all the facilities they needed to declare to the OPCW and open for on-site inspection. Often, the reason for that failnre was the absence of implementing legislation and regulations. The imphcation, however, was that States Parties with implementing deficiencies were not inspected (or were under-inspected in relative terms) by the OPCW. 

A third area of implementation of the CWC is the apphcation of the provisions to prevent CW prohferation. These provisions are contained in the general undertakings of the States Parties (Article I) in conjunction with the apphcable definitions (Article II), the requirement for States Parties to take the measures necessary for them to fully implement all the provisions of the Convention and to render each other legal assistance (Article VII), and the provisions on declarations, inspections and transfer prohibitions under Article VI. 

Article VI, which deals with the verification of legitimate activities in the chemical industry through declarations, inspections and transfer controls, has nevertheless an important role to play. It increases confidence in the legitimacy of their activities, and at the same time can highlight possible problem areas in the proper functioning of national control systems for chemicals. 

In this context, one needs to recall the objectives of the multilateral verification system. Traditionally, two aspects were emphasized confidence-building and deterrence of treaty violation. In the CWC case, confidence-building relates to the confirmation (a) that the declared CW stockpiles and production capabilities are actually being destroyed, and (b) that chemical activities in those facilities inspected under Article VI are legitimate. The deterrence effect of the CWC verification system relies essentially on two interconnected factors the probability that an Article VI inspection can actually detect a violation (and, relatedly, that the inspection system is optimized in such a way that it induces compliance and maximizes the selection of relevant facilities ), and the confidence of States Parties in the OPCW s ability to conduct an effective and conclusive challenge inspection should it be requested to do so. 

At the conclusion of the negotiation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in 1992, this treaty was heralded as a major breakthrough in multilateral arms control. It was the first comprehensively verifiable multilateral treaty that completely banned an entire class of weapons, and went further than any previous treaty in the depth, extent and intrusiveness of its verification. Verification under the CWC includes compulsory national declarations about relevant industrial and military activities, destruction of chemical weapons within a time frame with intrusive verification, and a regime of routine inspections of declared industrial and military facilities. Additional features are the possibility of a challenge inspection, whereby a State Party can request an inspection of any site in another State Party at short notice, and provisions for the investigation of alleged use of chemical weapons. 

Since the entry into force of the Convention, 63 States Parties have declared a total of over 4,000 inspectable OCPFs. Of these facilities, more than 100 had received inspections by the time of the RevCon. The Technical Secretariat has concluded that these inspections have shown that some of the OCPFs are highly relevant to the object and purpose of the Convention. These facilities produce chemicals that are structurally related to Schedule 1 chemicals. Of particular relevance to the Convention are facilities that combine this kind of chemistry with production equipment and other hardware designed to provide fiexibihty and containment. ... 

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