The Norwegian Nobel Committee on Oct. 11 announced its decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2013 to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The Hague-based organization, created in 1997 to implement the 1992 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) to prohibit the production, storage and use of chemical weapons, will receive the $1.25 million prize in Oslo on Dec. 10, the 117th anniversary of Nobel Prize founder Alfred Nobel's death.
The committee's message is clear. It hopes that awarding the prize to the OPCW will accelerate global efforts to eliminate chemical weapons, which are relatively cheap and easy to produce and can indiscriminately kill or injure large numbers of people.
It is noteworthy that the committee explicitly named the United States and Russia in stating that certain states have failed to observe the April 2012 deadline, under the CWC, to destroy their arsenals of chemical weapons. Both countries — which together possess some 95 percent of the global stockpile of chemical weapons — should move quickly to fulfill their responsibilities.