What is the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)?
The experience of large-scale chemical warfare was so horrifying that it led to the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which forbids the use of chemical and bacteriological agents in war. Images of victims gasping, frothing and choking to death had a profound impact. The text of the protocol reflects the global sense of abhorrence. It affirmed that these weapons had been “justly condemned by the general opinion of the civilized world.” The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) reinforces aspects of the Geneva Conventions that also dealt with these agents and was negotiated over a period of 24 years. In 1992, after a decade of long and painstaking negotiations, the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva agreed to the text of the (CWC), which was adopted by the General Assembly on 30 November 1992, in its resolution entitled Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction (A/RES/47/39). More than 170 countries have signed the CWC
