Seventh OPCW Inspector Training Course Concludes

On 30 March 2007, the seventh inspector training course conducted by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concluded.

The eleven-week intensive training course was completed by twenty-two inspector trainees from Bangladesh, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Cuba, France, Germany, India, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, the Netherlands, Romania, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The training programme had been expanded in this year and included lectures from experts in chemical demilitarisation and industry verification, a review of case studies and table-top exercises to ensure familiarity with on-site inspection procedures, as well as field training. The field training imparts skills in protection against chemical weapons and potential toxic exposure, which involved dealing with “live” blister and nerve chemical warfare agents. The inspectors received medical and communications instruction aid and exercised OPCW safety procedures.

The Seventh OPCW inspector training course was supported by the Governments of Belgium, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The OPCW’s newest inspectors join an international team, comprising more than 180 on-site verification professionals, who have successfully completed more than 150,000 inspector days, while conducting missions at over 1,050 military and industrial facilities in 77 States Parties since 1997.

OPCW Deputy Director-General John Freeman congratulated the graduating inspectors on behalf of the Director-General, Rogelio Pfirter, and thanked the Member States for their generous support. He expressed his gratitude to the organisers, lecturers and trainers both within and outside the OPCW Technical Secretariat for preserving and enhancing one of the OPCW’s most precious assets, an effective and knowledgeable inspector corps.

In June 1997, the OPCW Inspectorate received its first mission mandate to verify compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention, which entirely bans the development, production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons, and foresees their destruction under international verification and within agreed timelines.

PR23 / 2007

Categories: Inspectorate