The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is an intergovernmental organisation and the implementing body for the Chemical Weapons Convention, which entered into force on 29 April 1997.
The headquarters were officially opened by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands on 20 May 1998.
On 7 September 2000 the OPCW and the United Nations signed a cooperation agreement outlining how they were to coordinate their activities.
A permanent memorial to all victims is present at the back of the building and is open to the public. The OPCW headquarters building was designed by American architect Gerhard Kallmann of Kallmann McKinnell & Wood. The first Director-General only served about one year of his second term, after which, in April 2002, he was removed from office on grounds of lack of confidence by the member states.
He also has served as Permanent Representative of Spain to the United Nations in New York and Ambassador of Spain to Mali, Mauritania, former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Bulgaria. == Conviction by the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organization == In 2002, the United States convened an extraordinary session of the Conference of the States Parties of the OPCW to request the dismissal of José Bustani, then Director General of the OPCW.
He also lodged a complaint before the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organization, which, by a judgment of 16 July 2003, quashed the dismissal and condemned the OPCW to compensation for material and moral damage.
Verification consists both of evaluation of declarations by member states and onsite inspections. The organisation was awarded the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize "for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons".
The removal was subsequently determined to be improper by an Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organization and consequently Bustani was awarded €50,000 in moral damages, his pay for the remainder of his second term, and his legal costs. On 11 October 2013, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that the OPCW had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "extensive work to eliminate chemical weapons".
The award was created as a legacy of the OPCW winning the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize.
A historical list of Directors-General is shown below. The appointment of Ambassador Arias followed a consensus recommendation by the OPCW Executive Council in October 2017. Ambassador Arias is a career diplomat with extensive experience in multilateral diplomacy.
It also can send experts to help countries to investigate crime scenes where chemical agents may have been used." In June 2018 following the Skripal poisoning the UK convinced other members despite the Russian opposition that the OPCW needed to grant itself new powers to assign blame for attacks.
The OPCW budget for 2020 is €70,958,760 == Powers == The OPCW has the power to report on whether chemical weapons were used in an attack it has investigated. "The OPCW has the power to send inspectors to any signatory country to search for evidence of production of banned chemicals.
On 21 April 2021, Syria was stripped of its voting rights at the OPCW after Syrian forces were found to have repeatedly used poison gas during the Syrian civil war.
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