Warfare is one of the most dangerous, violent and most physically and mentally traumatic atrocities of our world, accounting for hundreds of thousands of deaths and costing nations billions of dollars in supplies, weapons development and other war-time needs every year. In the Twenty-First Century, one of the biggest “frontiers” in weapons development has been the idea of chemical weapons, especially those in the form of weaponized gasses. These weapons, which are defined as an “ammunition or device, specifically designed to cause death or other harm through toxic properties of toxic chemicals. have the potential to cause an unprecedented amount of harm if their proliferation is not regulated.
The presence of these weapons throughout history is all too familiar to many of the world’s nations. Early chemical weapons, such as Chlorine and Mustard Gas were used in World Warl and proved to be grimly effective, killing an estimated one million soldiers and civilians over the four year span of the war. After the shocking and horrifying impact of these weapons during the First World War, the international community convened to ban these weapons from ever appearing again on the international battlefield.
This convention resulted in a paper known as the Geneva Protocol, an international resolution banning the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, but allowing nations to continue to own and build stockpiles of them in case of future emergency. As one of the earliest signatories of the Geneva Protocol and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, France has been strongly opposed to the use of Chemical Weapons throughout the duration of their existence and has been instrumental in protecting their non-proliferation on many key occasions.
In 1989, France was a leading nation in calling for a resumption of negotiations by the Conference Of Disarmament, a nonproliferation oriented conference whose summit ultimately ended up being a decisive event in the eventual creation and ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993. France has also been a close partner with the OPCW (Organisation For The Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) and has collaborated with them on many anti-proliferation projects and operations.
France currently is not in possession of chemical weapons of any kind and withdrew its reservations on the right to retaliate if attacked by chemical weapons in 1996. As a country with no chemical weapons, France firmly believes that all stockpiles and caches of chemical weapons around the globe must be destroyed. France would also like to highlight the United States, Libya, Russia and Iraq, four nations who have all ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention but have yet to fully destroy the arsenal of chemical weapons that they have declared possession of.
In 2014, a statement by the OPCW declared that 90% of the world’s chemical weapons stockpiles have been destroyed. France strongly commends the hard work and success of the International Community in attaining this landmark goal in non-proliferation, but would like to point out that this still leaves an estimated 10,000 metric tons of chemical weapons around the globe that still reside in national caches and stockpiles, as well as an unknown amount in unaccounted chemical weapons that could potentially be in the possession of terrorists or unstable governments.
France believes that even if weapons are possessed solely on the basis of deterrence, there is little or no way the international community can ensure that the nation in possession of chemical weapons will not use them. Also, if some countries have weapons and others do not, nations possessing chemical weapons can easily dominate unarmed nations and arms races for chemical supremacy can easily occur.
While the cornerstone of France’s position on chemical weapons focuses on their non-proliferation and ultimate elimination, we also would like to focus on methods of protection in the event of a chemical attack. Chief among these anti-chemical protections are the drugs Atropine and 2-PAM, which if administered quickly, have been proven to provide protection against the nerve gas Sarin, a deadly chemical weapon used in 2013 during the Syrian Civil War. France supports dispensing these drugs on a large scale and encourages other countries to consider this plan of action.
France ranks fighting the proliferation of chemical weapons as one of its highest priorities. If their use and development is not controlled and contained, chemical weapons could pose an unimaginable threat to global security and all seven billion humans on the planet. For these reasons, France will continue to work day and night in the fight against chemical weapons, because our firm belief is that the fewer ways to kill each other there are in our world, the better it will be for all of us.