Laboratory Personnel Trained in Implementing the Chemical Weapons Ban

On 7 July 2006, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) completed the second session of its two-part analytical skills development course. The course has provided chemists from industrial, academic and government laboratories training in analytical chemistry. This specialized course increases national capacity to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), facilitates the adoption of best practice and expands the pool of personnel qualified for employment within the national authorities that implement the CWC and at the OPCW’s Technical Secretariat in The Hague.

The course was attended by thirty-nine participants, representing their OPCW Member States. The first session, hosting nineteen participants, was held in Helsinki, Finland, at the Finnish Institute for Verification of the Chemical Weapons Convention (VERIFIN). A further twenty participants attended the second session of the course, held in Delft, the Netherlands, receiving their training at the Delft University of Technology’s ChemTech Department.

The course fosters the exchange of information and expertise designed to benefit qualified analytical chemists from Member States whose economies are in transition or in development. In the first week of the two-week course, the chemists received hands-on experience in gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. In the subsequent week, samples were prepared, and their analysis was undertaken using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry.

OPCW Director-General Ambassador Rogelio Pfirter expressed the Organisation’s expectation that the analytical chemists would return to their national institutions to help these laboratories achieve much higher levels of technical excellence and assist in the implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Director-General Pfirter thanked VERIFIN and the Delft University of Technology for hosting the course and for providing highly competent teaching staff to impart these important skills. On behalf of the Organisation, Director-General Pfirter expressed his gratitude to the European Union for its generous financial support of this training programme.

PR35 / 2006

Categories: International Cooperation, National implementation, Non-proliferation of chemical weapons