Syria Chemical Weapons Equipment Destroyed: OPCW

The Joint OPCW-UN Mission on 31 October 2013 confirmed that Syria has completed the functional destruction of all critical equipment that it had declared for manufacturing chemical weapons.

By doing so, Syria has met the deadline set by the OPCW Executive Council to “complete as soon as possible and in any case not later than 1 November 2013, the destruction of chemical weapons production and mixing or filling equipment.”  

Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is presently involved in destroying Syria's stockpiles of chemical weapons.

The Joint OPCW-UN Mission has inspected 21 of the 23 sites declared by Syria, and 39 of the 41 facilities located at those sites. The two remaining sites were not visited due to safety and security concerns. But Syria declared those sites as abandoned and that the chemical weapons programme items they contained were moved to other declared sites, which were inspected.

About the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)

• The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is an independent, international body set up in 1997 to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention.

• It carries out inspections of destruction procedures, as well as evaluating members' own declarations, in order to verify that the convention is being adhered to.

• It is based in The Hague, Netherland and has 189 member states, covering around 98 percent of the world's population. These member nations have agreed to work together to create a world free from chemical weapons.