03.03.2015 — check against delivery– Mr President, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen, We are living in tense times. The Ukraine conflict, Syria, Iraq, the advance of the ISIS terrorist group in the Middle East and Boko Haram in Africa – we face a large number of international crises, a situation we have not had to deal with before in […]

Taking Disarmament Forward

The UNSCR 1540 implementation process in sub-Saharan Africa has been slow. As of October 2011, 26 of the 48 states in the region have submitted 1540 national reports.

Sub-Saharan Africa 1540 Reporting: Regional Overview

Independent nonproliferation experts can now get images offering much greater detail about Iran’s and North Korea’s above-ground nuclear facilities. Last week, the satellite company DigitalGlobe announced the U.S. Commerce Department had approved a long-standing license request to sell its highest-available resolution photographs to commercial clients. Previously, the U.S. government had forbidden the sale of images […]

Independent Experts Can Now Get Sharper Satellite Images of North Korea, Iran

As a follow-up of a historic international conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons (Oslo, March 2013), the government of Mexico hosted a 2nd international conference from 13-14 February 2014 in Nuevo Vallarta, a residential resort community in the state of Nayarit, to build momentum for an ambitious diplomatic process that puts the catastrophic […]

NAYARIT CONFERENCE ON THE ‘HUMANITARIAN IMPACT OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS’

Syria’s regime says it will need at least a year to dismantle its chemical weapons arsenal, but if Libya’s experience is anything to go by, this is a hopelessly optimistic forecast. Damascus has provided the Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) with a full inventory of its chemical arsenal, in order to […]

9 years on, Libya still not free of chemical weapons

The OPCW organised a special 2-day induction programme on 12 and 13 September 2013 for a group of senior government representatives from the Federal Republic of Somalia to assist country’s implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The delegation was headed by H.E. Ambassador Yusuf Mohamed Ismail Bari-Bari, Permanent Representative of Somalia to the United […]

OPCW Provides Somalia Assistance to Begin CWC Implementation

On 28 June 2013 the Chemical Weapons Convention entered into force for Somalia, making it the 189th State Party to the treaty. Somalia had earlier deposited its instrument of ratification with the Secretary-General of the United Nations, on 29 May, and 30 days later the Convention entered into force for the country. This has reduced […]

Somalia Becomes 189th State Party To The Chemical Weapons Convention