Chemical Weapons

When states-parties to the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) gather next month in The Hague for their second review conference, the plenary sessions will be unusually full, and for good reason. Since the ban on developing, producing, stockpiling, transferring, or using chemical weapons entered into force in April 1997, the CWC has won support at an unprecedented rate for a multilateral arms control agreement. (Continue)

I hear a dull thud. A blue mist comes floating across the frosty fields. In the field behind the cemetery, the DOVO, the Belgian War Munition Demolition Service, has blown up another heap of First World War ammunition. They do it twice a day, one and a half tons a year. When the farmers find grenades, they leave them at the base of the utility masts, and the miners collect them. And so it goes on here. Generation after generation, this soil continues to vomit up grenades, buttons, buckles, knives, skulls, bottles, rifles, sometimes even a whole tank. The Great War never ends. (Continue)