International treaties Geneva Protocol

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. 

The Geneva Protocol of 1925 prohibited the first use of chemicals for wartime use. Since 1928, an international treaty has banned the use of chemical weapons but not their development and production. A multilateral treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), would require the destruction of chemical weapons and the means to produce them. The United States signed the convention in 1993 but has not ratified it as of July 1996. Earlier, the United States signed bilateral agreements with Russia aimed at destroying both countries chemical weapon stockpiles. 

Advocates of the treaty forecast that an immense array of benefits would flow from an international agreement in Geneva. They contended that a treaty would bolster the Geneva Protocol and the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, establish legal norms against the development, production, stockpiling, transfer and retention of chemical weapons. 

Similar considerations apply to other international organizations and regimes with comparable levels of membership to the OPCW. There are more than 120 members in common with the WTO and more than 130 in common with the ICRC s Additional Protocols I and II to the 1949 Geneva Conventions on the laws of armed conflict in the case of the WCO, the 1988 Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances and the 1989 Basel Convention, there are 140 members or more that are also States Parties to the CWC. Again, the majority of States not Party to the CWC have joined the treaties or constituent instruments administered by these other organizations. 

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