INVITATION: Panel Discussion on Strengthening National Implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention in Africa

Your Excellency/ Delegate:

You are cordially invited to attend a dinnertime event on “Strengthening National Implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention in Africa” organized by the African Centre for Science and International Security (AFRICSIS). This event will take place on the margins of the Chemical Weapons Convention’s “Twenty-Third Conference of States Parties and Fourth Review Conference (CSP-23 and RC-4)”.

Date:            Thursday, 22 November 2018
Time:            16:00-18:00
Location:      Africa Room, World Forum Building, The Hague, The Netherlands

Moderator:      Hubert Foy (AFRICSIS)
Panelists:         Yasemin BALCI (VERTIC), Clotilde Sirri (AFRICSIS), David Mugisa (Uganda)

The purpose of this event is to inform national authorities and other stakeholders working in the field of national legislation and implementation measures about shared challenges and existing opportunities for addressing them. The panel discussion, drawn from AFRICSIS work in the continent, achors on the fact that words on the page, or even the norms embedded in the Convention itself, mean little unless we take the necessary steps to not only enact them, but also to sustain them. A basic obligation of membership in the OPCW is for each State Party to take the steps necessary to implement the Convention on its own territory — and yet dozens of African States Parties face significant challenges in adopting the Convention.

A further troubling challenge is that many States Parties with legislation and implementation measures in place lack the national authorities with the essential financial and human resources necessary to monitor the appropriate implementation of the Convention. We must work together to ensure long-term cooperation among national and international actors in order to assist States Parties that do not have the means to adopt national implementation measures as comprehensively and expediently as possible.

The event will include brief statements/presentations by panelists about their work in Africa, followed by a 20-minute Q&A session. Dinner will be provided in the Pangea Restaurant, located on the same level as the Africa Room, please see the attached map. The event is sponsored by the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

For logistics purposes, may I kindly ask you to confirm your participation by sending an email to the event lead Clotilde Sirri at csirri@africsis.org

We hope to see you there on 22 November!

The report of the site meeting can be found here.