On 31 March 2006, the sixth inspector training course conducted by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concluded.
The eleven-week intensive training course was completed by fifteen inspector trainees from Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Poland, Serbia and Montenegro, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The training programme was expanded 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 for the first time dealing with “live” blister and nerve chemical warfare agent. The inspectors received first aid training and exercised OPCW safety procedures.
The Sixth OPCW inspector training course was supported by the Governments of Belgium, the Czech Republic, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The OPCW’s newest inspectors join an international team, comprising more than 180 on-site verification professionals, which have successfully completed more than 130,000 inspector days, while conducting missions at over 900 military and industrial facilities in 74 States Parties in the past nine years.
OPCW Director-General Rogelio Pfirter congratulated the graduating inspectors and thanked the Member States for their generous support. He expressed his gratitude to the organisers, lecturers and trainers both within and outside the Secretariat for their vital contribution to a successful team effort in their common goal of eliminating chemical weapons.
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.
PR15 / 2006