Image: Dr Paul Walker (left) and SIPRI’s Ian Anthony (courtesy of @rlafoundation)
On 29 November SIPRI hosted a lecture by Dr Paul Walker, Director of Environmental Security and Sustainability at Green Cross International, who was recently awarded the 2013 Right Livelihood Award ‘for working tirelessly to rid the world of chemical weapons’.
With the recent accession of Syria to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the international abolition regime now includes 190 countries. Only six countries remain outside of the regime, and since 1990 some 80 percent of the world's declared chemical weapons stockpiles have been destroyed.
Dr Walker has worked on chemical weapons non-proliferation and destruction for over 20 years, and in his lecture he spoke about the challenges involved in building a world free of chemical weapons. In particular, he spoke about the delays involved in destroying the chemical weapons stockpiles of Russia and the United States, and the problems involved in properly identifying chemical weapon use in Syria.
He also discussed the progress made in the demilitarization of chemical agents, the lessons learned in safely eliminating a whole class of weapons of mass destruction, and implications for other arms control regimes.