The head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said on Friday that being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize was a recognition of the group's work for global peace in the past 16 years. The OPCW was formed in 1997 to enforce the Chemical Weapons Convention, the first international treaty to outlaw an entire class of weapons. "The decision by the Nobel committee to bestow this year's peace prize on the OPCW is a great honour for our organisation," Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu said. "We are a small organisation which for over 16 years and away from the glare of international publicity has shouldered an onerous but noble task to act as the guardian of the global ban on chemical weapons." Based in The Hague, Netherlands, the OPCW has largely worked out of the limelight until this year, when the United Nations called on its expertise to help investigate alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria. OPCW inspectors are already on a highly risky UN-backed disarmament mission based in Damascus to verify and destroy Syrian President Bashar Assad's arsenal of poison gas and nerve agents amid a raging civil war. Uzumcu said 27 OPCW experts were visiting chemical weapons storage and production sites in Syria, making inventory lists. By giving the peace award to an international organisation, the Nobel committee found a way to highlight the devastating Syrian civil war, now in its third year, without siding with any group involved. The fighting has killed an estimated 100,000 people and forced millions of Syrians to flee their homes and country, according to the UN. In the past, seven nations - Albania, India, Iraq, Libya, Russia and the United States, along with a country identified by the OPCW only as "a state party" but widely believed to be South Korea - have declared stockpiles of chemical weapons and have or are in the process of destroying them. "It's a great honour to all of us, all state members. And I suggested that we issue a journal for this occasion with pictures of all representatives because I thought we participated and contributed to the peace and security of the world which is very good. I feel proud and happy," said the Iraqi representative Sead-Ibrahim El Halavi. However, the committee noted that some countries have not observed the deadline of April 2012 for destroying their chemical weapons. That applies especially to the US and Russia, said Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland. After an August 21 chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds in Syria, Assad was faced by the prospect of possibly devastating US strikes against his military. To avert that, he admitted his chemical weapons stockpile and his government quickly signed up to the Chemical Weapons Convention and allowed OPCW inspectors into his country. Syria is scheduled to formally become a member of the organisation on Monday. The struggle to control chemical weapons began in earnest after World War I, when agents such as mustard gas killed more than 100,000 people and injured a million more. The 1925 Geneva Convention prohibited the use of the weapons but the production or storage of chemical weapons wasn't outlawed until the Chemical Weapons Convention came into force in 1997. The Peace Prize Committee noted that during World War II, chemical means were employed in Hitler's mass exterminations and said that chemical weapons were subsequently used on numerous occasions by both states and what it called "terrorists". According to the OPCW, 81.1 percent of the world's declared stockpile of chemical agents have been verifiably destroyed. Albania, India and "a third country" - believed to be South Korea - have completed the destruction of their declared stockpiles. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/17f963304ccb463dfb91414786ea676e Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork

• published: 31 Jul 2015
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