International Organizations Join OPCW to Commemorate All Victims of Chemical Warfare

On behalf of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Director-General Ambassador Rogelio Pfirter expressed his appreciation to the international organizations that observed the Remembrance Day for all victims of chemical warfare.

On 27 April 2006, the Remembrance Day was observed for the first time at the Headquarters of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague. The commemoration was attended by representatives of OPCW Member States and international organizations, among them the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's Office of the High Commissioner on National Minorities, and the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization.

The Office of the Spokesman of the United Nations Secretary-General, the United Nations Office in Geneva, the United Nations Department for Disarmament Affairs in Geneva and New York, the United Nations Department of Public Information, and the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, as well as the Association of South-East Asian Nations, the BWC Preparatory Committee in Geneva, the European Parliament, the European Union, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation actively supported the OPCW in creating greater awareness of this solemn occasion.

The United Nations Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan, sent a message in which he stressed the importance of the universality of the CWC and called on all concerned to redouble efforts to work for the full implementation of the Convention, and to ensure that chemical weapons are kept out of the hands of non-state actors.

On this solemn occasion in The Hague, all Member States reaffirmed their determination to ensure that these weapons are banned forever through the full and effective implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

In his Remembrance Day address, OPCW Director-General, Ambassador Rogelio Pfirter, stressed that the aim of the Chemical Weapons Convention and of the OPCW is not only to ensure that those who possess chemical weapons destroy them safely and irreversibly, but also that those planning to misuse chemistry to produce new weapons will not succeed. He underscored the Convention’s purpose to deal with an inheritance of the past and to address the needs of the future by enhancing international peace and security.

The Remembrance Day will be observed every year to raise awareness of the horror and suffering caused by chemical weapons, as well as to call for a world free of chemical weapons.

PR30 / 2006

Categories: Remembrances, commemorations, condolences