MOSCOW — The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the Hague-based agency responsible for destroying Syria’s chemical weapons, has won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said Friday in Oslo.
The award caught much of the world by surprise, as did last year’s prize, which went to the European Union. But the removal of chemical weapons from Syria has been viewed as an important step in bringing an end to a two-and-a-half year war that has killed an estimated 100,000 people.
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“Disarmament figures prominently in Alfred Nobel’s will,” the committee said in a statement, recalling the extensive use of chemical weapons in World War I and their use by states and terrorists alike. Noting that previous prize recipients have been honored for their efforts to do away with nuclear weapons, the committee said that through this year’s award, it was “seeking to contribute to the elimination of chemical weapons.”
The Nobel committee said a suspected sarin gas attack in Syria in August that killed more than 1,000 civilians “underlined the need to enhance the efforts to do away with such weapons,” which visit a particular horror on victims, and on those watching from around the world.
OPCW said on its Web site that it would hold a news conference later Friday to discuss winning the prize.
The OPCW operation in Syria was set off by a Russian diplomatic initiative, which proposed persuading Syria to give up its chemical weapons in exchange for the United States backing off plans to bomb the country. President Obama was considering air strikes after a suspected chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs on Aug. 21 that killed more than 1,000 people.
The agency has long been accustomed to little attention, and its role in Syria has been a big adjustment. “People are still getting their heads around being in the global limelight,” Michael Luhan, the OPCW’s spokesman, told The Washington Post in a recent interview. “If this is not an example of building a plane and flying it at the same time, I don’t know what is.”
OPCW inspectors returned to Syria at the beginning of October. The 20-member team faces great danger as it attempts to find and oversee the destruction of 1,000 tons of chemical weapons. The team is accompanied by unarmed U.N. security forces and guarded by Syrian government forces, which are not in control of the entire country.
Not only are the inspectors attempting to operate in the middle of a civil war, they are working with a Syrian government that has been reluctant to embrace outside monitors. The challenge is “kind of like asking a weekend runner to run a sub-three-minute mile,” Amy Smithson, a chemical weapons expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, said. “The OPCW is very much accustomed to routine inspections.”
The OPCW was created in 1997 as the enforcement arm of the Chemical Weapons Convention, the agreement that prohibits countries around the world from producing and using chemical weapons. It has mostly been occupied with affirming that countries like the United States and Russia, which had the largest stockpiles of chemical weapons, were following through on their promises to destroy them.
“The conventions and the work of the OPCW have defined the use of chemical weapons as a taboo under international law,” the Nobel committee said. It noted that a few states still have not joined the convention, and chided the United States and Russia for failing to meet an April, 2012 deadline for destroying all chemical weapons.
The Nobel committee does not reveal the identities of any of the other nominees when it awards the prize, and information about them is sealed for 50 years. But the committee did report a record number of candidates this year: 259, of which 50 are organizations. The previous record was in 2011, when there were 241 nominees.
Before the prize was announced at about 5 a.m. Eastern time on Friday, speculation about who would win had focused on Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani teenager who defied a Taliban campaign to close schools in the Swat Valley and was shot and critically injured last year in retaliation for her efforts; Congolese gynecologist Denis Mukwege, who has dedicated his life to treating women raped by militias and soldiers in Congo; Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia; former president of Ireland Mary Robinson; former German chancellor Helmut Kohl; Pope Francis and several others.
The award caught much of the world by surprise, as did last year’s prize, which went to the European Union. But the removal of chemical weapons from Syria has been viewed as an important step in bringing an end to a two-and-a-half year war that has killed an estimated 100,000 people.
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The U.N. said it was concerned over this week’s actions and a rights group called them “extremely alarming.”
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Stephanie McCrummen Officials seek to “standardize” Islamic preaching, but critics say the effort could add fuel to the coup backlash.
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“Disarmament figures prominently in Alfred Nobel’s will,” the committee said in a statement, recalling the extensive use of chemical weapons in World War I and their use by states and terrorists alike. Noting that previous prize recipients have been honored for their efforts to do away with nuclear weapons, the committee said that through this year’s award, it was “seeking to contribute to the elimination of chemical weapons.”
The Nobel committee said a suspected sarin gas attack in Syria in August that killed more than 1,000 civilians “underlined the need to enhance the efforts to do away with such weapons,” which visit a particular horror on victims, and on those watching from around the world.
OPCW said on its Web site that it would hold a news conference later Friday to discuss winning the prize.
The OPCW operation in Syria was set off by a Russian diplomatic initiative, which proposed persuading Syria to give up its chemical weapons in exchange for the United States backing off plans to bomb the country. President Obama was considering air strikes after a suspected chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs on Aug. 21 that killed more than 1,000 people.
The agency has long been accustomed to little attention, and its role in Syria has been a big adjustment. “People are still getting their heads around being in the global limelight,” Michael Luhan, the OPCW’s spokesman, told The Washington Post in a recent interview. “If this is not an example of building a plane and flying it at the same time, I don’t know what is.”
OPCW inspectors returned to Syria at the beginning of October. The 20-member team faces great danger as it attempts to find and oversee the destruction of 1,000 tons of chemical weapons. The team is accompanied by unarmed U.N. security forces and guarded by Syrian government forces, which are not in control of the entire country.
Not only are the inspectors attempting to operate in the middle of a civil war, they are working with a Syrian government that has been reluctant to embrace outside monitors. The challenge is “kind of like asking a weekend runner to run a sub-three-minute mile,” Amy Smithson, a chemical weapons expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, said. “The OPCW is very much accustomed to routine inspections.”
The OPCW was created in 1997 as the enforcement arm of the Chemical Weapons Convention, the agreement that prohibits countries around the world from producing and using chemical weapons. It has mostly been occupied with affirming that countries like the United States and Russia, which had the largest stockpiles of chemical weapons, were following through on their promises to destroy them.
“The conventions and the work of the OPCW have defined the use of chemical weapons as a taboo under international law,” the Nobel committee said. It noted that a few states still have not joined the convention, and chided the United States and Russia for failing to meet an April, 2012 deadline for destroying all chemical weapons.
The Nobel committee does not reveal the identities of any of the other nominees when it awards the prize, and information about them is sealed for 50 years. But the committee did report a record number of candidates this year: 259, of which 50 are organizations. The previous record was in 2011, when there were 241 nominees.
Before the prize was announced at about 5 a.m. Eastern time on Friday, speculation about who would win had focused on Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani teenager who defied a Taliban campaign to close schools in the Swat Valley and was shot and critically injured last year in retaliation for her efforts; Congolese gynecologist Denis Mukwege, who has dedicated his life to treating women raped by militias and soldiers in Congo; Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia; former president of Ireland Mary Robinson; former German chancellor Helmut Kohl; Pope Francis and several others.