Nobel Peace Prize-2013 awarded to chemical weapons watchdog
OSLO: This year's Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Geo News reported minutes ago Friday.
The Hague-based OPCW was founded in 1997 to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention signed on January 13, 1993.
It marks the second year in a row that the Peace Prize is awarded to an organisation, following last year when the European Union got the honour.
Until recently operating in relative obscurity, the OPCW has suddenly been catapulted into the global spotlight because of its work supervising the dismantling of Syria's chemical arsenal and facilities.
A team of around 30 OPCW arms experts and UN logistics and security
personnel are on the ground in Syria and have started to destroy weapons
production facilities, with footage of their work broadcast on Syrian
television.
The OPCW said on Tuesday it was sending a second wave of inspectors to
bolster the disarmament mission in the war-ravaged nation.
Since the OPCW came into existence 16 years ago, it has destroyed 57,000
tonnes of chemical weapons, the majority of them leftovers from the Cold War held by the United States and Russia.
"It's the slow steady laying down of bricks over the weeks, months and
years, people sitting in control rooms watching this stuff going into the chutes," OPCW spokesman Michael Luhan said recently.
He described the OPCW's work as characterised by "persistence" and "without any fanfare."
"It's the slow grinding work that we hope over time will be more
appreciated," he said.
The OPCW's work was the "subject of years and years of patient diplomacy in which we've demonstrated that we do diplomacy very, very well. We've kept everybody aboard, we keep adding states parties, we're approaching
universality."
To date, the OPCW has 189 members representing more than 98 percent of the world population, with Syria due to become a full-fledged member of the convention on Monday.
Israel and Myanmar signed in 1993 but have not yet ratified, according to the OPCW website.
Four states -- North Korea, Angola, Egypt, South Sudan -- have neither
signed nor ratified the Convention.
The OPCW also provides assistance and protection to any member state
subject to threats or attacks with chemical weapons.
Luhan, the OPCW spokesman, said any reaction to the peace prize would be
posted on the organisation's website, adding it did not want to create the impression that it was focussed on anything but its work.
"We're in the process of trying to achieve something in Syria," he said.
"If we achieve the objectives of this mission (in Syria), then there'll be something to celebrate."
AFP
