Chemical Weapons Convention

The Chemical Weapons Convention, formally the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction, is an arms control treaty administered by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague, which entered into force on 29 April 1997. It prohibits the use, large-scale development, production, stockpiling and transfer of chemical weapons and their precursors except for narrow research, medical, pharmaceutical or protective purposes, and obligates member states to destroy their existing stockpiles under OPCW verification, an effort the states parties completed in July 2023. As of August 2022, 193 states were party to the convention, with Israel a signatory that has not ratified and Egypt, North Korea and South Sudan neither signed nor acceded.