Nobel Peace Prize 2013: The OPCW and the Fight to Eliminate Chemical Weapons

This note covers the Nobel Peace Prize 2013: who won it, what the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) does, the history of chemical weapons bans that led to its work, why the Norwegian Nobel Committee honoured it, how the effort unfolded over more than a century, why it matters, and quick facts for exams.

What was the Nobel Peace Prize 2013 awarded for?

The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2013 to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons "for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons". This is the official citation, and it was quoted exactly on the prize announcement.

In plain words, the Committee was saying that one international organisation had spent years inspecting countries, destroying stockpiles and enforcing a global ban on an entire category of weapon.

The prize recognised the OPCW as an institution, not an individual, and the whole prize went to it as a single award rather than being split.

The formal name of this award is the Nobel Peace Prize. It is one of the five original prizes named in Alfred Nobel's will, and it is decided and presented by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo, unlike the other Nobel Prizes which are awarded in Stockholm.

Who are the laureates?

The 2013 Peace Prize had a single laureate, which was an organisation rather than a person. It received the entire prize amount of 8,000,000 Swedish kronor.

Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)

The OPCW was founded in 1997 to oversee the Chemical Weapons Convention, the international treaty that bans the use, production and storage of chemical weapons. At the time of the award it held the entire prize share, described as "1/1".

According to the Nobel committee's own account, the organisation monitors whether the Convention is respected, carries out inspections to verify that countries are keeping their promises, and has destroyed many chemical weapons stockpiles.

By 2013 it represented 190 member countries, covering about 98 per cent of the world's population, territory and chemical industry, as stated in the award ceremony speech.

What problem was the OPCW set up to solve?

Chemical weapons have a long and grim history. The award ceremony speech noted that poisoned weapons go back to ancient warfare: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey mention poisoned arrows used in the Trojan War, the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu wrote of combining fire with weapons, and the Hindu Law of Manu favoured banning poison and fire arrows while allowing the poisoning of food and water instead.

Calls for a ban followed over the centuries. The Hague Peace Congress of 1899 and a further Hague Congress in 1907 both recommended prohibiting "poison and poison weapons" in war, but these recommendations had little practical effect.

The first truly massive use came in World War One, when around 124,000 tonnes of gas were produced; roughly 85,000 people died because of chemical weapons and almost 1.2 million were injured.

After that war, the world tried again. The Geneva Protocol of 1925 banned the use of chemical weapons in war, but it did not ban their production or storage. This loophole meant countries could still stockpile such weapons, which created a constant temptation to use them.

During World War Two, Hitler used chemical means to kill millions of people in mass exterminations, though he surprisingly did not deploy chemical weapons directly on the battlefield, possibly fearing Allied retaliation and the risk that his own forces would suffer from their use.

After the war, chemical weapons were used again: by the former regime in Iraq against Iran in the 1980s and against its own Kurdish population, and by terrorist groups on other occasions.

It became clear that a ban on use alone was not enough. A far more complete agreement, banning production and storage too, was needed to close the gap left by 1925.

What does the OPCW actually do?

The Chemical Weapons Convention was negotiated in 1992-93 and entered into force in 1997. Unlike the 1925 protocol, it prohibits the use, production and storage of chemical weapons altogether.

The OPCW exists to make sure countries actually follow this treaty, and the Committee's presentation speech describes its objective as "disarmament in the form of elimination" rather than mere arms control.

Every country that ratifies the Convention must submit a full declaration of whatever chemical weapons and production facilities it holds. It must then destroy these under international supervision, and admit OPCW inspectors to confirm that the destruction has actually taken place.

The ceremony speech states that OPCW inspectors have the right to inspect any production facility in a signatory state at just 76 hours' notice, which is a very short window designed to prevent countries from hiding evidence before inspectors arrive.

By the time of the award, the scale of this work was already large, as the table below shows.

The press release separately records that 189 states had acceded to the Convention by the date of the announcement, while the later ceremony speech, delivered two months afterwards, gives the slightly higher figure of 190 member states once Syria had joined.

These numbers show an organisation that was close to its goal but not finished, which is exactly how the Committee framed the award.

The speech also notes that the OPCW's work depended on cooperation not just between governments but also between business and industry, research institutions and organisations within those countries, without which many of the Convention's detailed obligations could not have been carried out.

Why did the Norwegian Nobel Committee choose the OPCW?

The Committee's press release explained that the conventions and the work of the OPCW had made the use of chemical weapons "a taboo under international law".

It specifically pointed to events in Syria, where chemical weapons had again been used, as a reason the world urgently needed to strengthen efforts against such weapons.

The Committee also tied the award to Alfred Nobel's will, which names the holding of peace congresses as one purpose of the Peace Prize, alongside fraternity between nations and the reduction of standing armies.

Thorbjørn Jagland, the Committee's chairman, said in his presentation speech that the Chemical Weapons Convention and the OPCW's work met all of Nobel's requirements because they concerned disarmament, acted like a modern peace congress, and strengthened fraternity between nations by treating all countries equally, unlike nuclear arms talks where some states have claimed an exclusive right to possess such weapons.

At the same time, the Committee was openly critical of some member states. The facts page on the OPCW states that the Committee criticised the United States and Russia for failing to destroy their large chemical weapons arsenals on schedule, and it hoped the prize would push non-member states to join the Convention.

Jagland also recalled that the Committee's work over the years has centred more on international cooperation than on disarmament, through bodies such as the League of Nations and the United Nations, and he said the OPCW had its feet firmly planted in both traditions, which figure prominently in Alfred Nobel's will.

What challenges remained in 2013?

Not everything had gone smoothly. The deadline set for destroying all declared chemical weapons was April 2012, but the OPCW missed it.

According to the ceremony speech, about 20 per cent of weapons, chiefly American and Russian stockpiles, had still not been destroyed by the time of the award, and Jagland said it was "not acceptable" that these two leading powers had not managed to finish what they themselves pressed others to do quickly.

Membership was also incomplete. The speech names six states that remained outside the Convention: Israel and Myanmar had signed but not ratified it, while Angola, North Korea, Egypt and South Sudan had neither signed nor ratified. The Committee's presentation speech directly urged these states to join and ratify.

Syria itself had only just joined the OPCW around the time of the prize, bringing a new and urgent task: destroying chemical weapons in the middle of an active civil war, under much tighter time pressure than usual.

Jagland called this "a huge challenge" for the organisation, acknowledging that chaos and conflict made the normal inspection and destruction process far harder to carry out.

He also warned that the target of removing chemical weapons from the earth entirely was highly ambitious and not guaranteed to hold forever, since new forms of warfare and new, as yet undefined chemical substances could in future confront the OPCW with fresh challenges.

How did the work develop?

The effort to ban chemical weapons took more than a century to reach the point where the OPCW could be honoured with a Peace Prize. The table below traces this using only the years named in the official Nobel sources.

Seen this way, the 2013 prize marked not a single breakthrough but the latest stage in a very long, repeatedly interrupted attempt to remove one type of weapon from the earth entirely.

Why does it matter?

The Committee treated the OPCW's work as proof that a weapon already built into the armed forces and military doctrines of many states could still be banned and physically removed, something Jagland called a huge step in human history, noting that no weapon of this kind had ever before had its removal from the earth's surface even attempted in this way.

This was presented as a possible model for other disarmament treaties, including efforts against nuclear weapons, with Jagland recalling that biological weapons had already been banned and that the Committee had repeatedly honoured the struggle against nuclear arms.

The prize also carried a clear message about unfinished business. By naming the United States and Russia's missed deadline, and listing the six states still outside the Convention, the Committee used the award to apply pressure rather than simply celebrate success.

It also linked the OPCW's work to wider diplomacy, suggesting that cooperation over Syria's chemical weapons had helped create a better climate for separate talks on Iran's nuclear programme, and for a possible political solution to the Syrian conflict itself.

Jagland also used the speech to reflect on the nature of the Peace Prize itself, arguing that peace is not achieved by bold individuals alone but also needs "practical politicians" and institutions such as those within the United Nations, working together.

The open question the sources leave is whether the "taboo" against chemical weapons, once apparently so close to becoming permanent, can hold as new states, non-state groups, or new chemical substances not yet defined in the Convention test it in the future.

How did the award connect to wider diplomacy on Syria and Iran?

Jagland's presentation speech argued that the Chemical Weapons Convention had become more than a technical disarmament tool: it had also offered a way to defuse an immediate international crisis.

He said the world had been "on the verge of a new military confrontation in the Middle East which could have unimaginable consequences", and that this had so far been avoided because the multilateral framework of the Convention gave countries a platform to resolve the Syrian chemical weapons crisis without resorting to force.

He suggested that this improved climate might also pave the way for wider negotiations on the Syrian conflict as a whole, noting that "one good step may be followed by others".

The speech further claimed that Russia's decision to use the Convention and the OPCW to shift the dispute over Syria's chemical weapons onto a diplomatic track, and President Obama's favourable response to that approach, may have helped create a more constructive atmosphere around separate talks on Iran's nuclear programme.

It pointed to a more conciliatory message from President Rouhani at the United Nations General Assembly, and the first telephone conversation between the presidents of Iran and the United States in over thirty years, alongside a preliminary agreement to limit Iran's nuclear programme.

Jagland was careful to add that a political solution in Syria and a peaceful resolution of Iran's nuclear issue remained difficult, but said developments looked more promising than they had for a long time.

He also recalled the 2010 agreement between Presidents Obama and Medvedev on strategic nuclear arms, describing it as fitting a modern reading of Nobel's call for reducing standing armies, and he insisted that nuclear weapons, like chemical ones, "must vanish from the face of the earth".

Quick facts for exams

The Nobel Peace Prize 2013 was awarded to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), an international body founded in 1997 to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention. The citation praised its "extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons".

The prize, announced on 11 October 2013 by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, was worth 8,000,000 Swedish kronor and went entirely to the OPCW as a single institution rather than being shared among individuals.

The award highlighted both the OPCW's progress, including destroying most declared stockpiles, and unfinished tasks, such as the missed 2012 destruction deadline and states that had not yet joined the Convention.

Note: Source. The prize facts in this note are from the Nobel Prize's official site, nobelprize.org.

Glossary

• Chemical weapon — a weapon that uses toxic chemicals to kill, injure or incapacitate people, rather than blast or heat.
• Chemical Weapons Convention — the 1992-93 treaty banning the use, production and storage of chemical weapons, in force since 1997.
• OPCW — the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, founded in 1997 to implement the Convention.
• Geneva Protocol — the 1925 agreement that banned the use of chemical weapons in war but not their production or storage.
• Disarmament — the reduction or elimination of a country's weapons, named in Alfred Nobel's will as a purpose of the Peace Prize.
• Ratify — the formal act by which a country's government agrees to be legally bound by a treaty it has signed.
• Stockpile — a stored supply of weapons or materials kept ready for possible use.
• Inspection — a verification visit, in this case by OPCW staff, checking whether a country is complying with the Convention.
• Taboo (in this context) — a practice so strongly condemned under international norms and law that using it becomes almost unthinkable.
• Norwegian Nobel Committee — the body in Oslo that selects the Nobel Peace Prize laureate each year.
• Citation — the official short sentence explaining why a laureate won the prize.
• Member state — a country that has formally joined an international treaty or organisation, such as the OPCW.
• Biological weapon — a weapon using living organisms or toxins, mentioned in the ceremony speech as already banned separately from chemical weapons.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: The Nobel Peace Prize 2013 went to a person. Correct: It went entirely to the OPCW, an organisation, not to any individual.
• Misconception: The Geneva Protocol of 1925 banned making and storing chemical weapons. Correct: It banned only their use, not their production or storage.
• Misconception: The Chemical Weapons Convention and the OPCW are the same thing. Correct: The Convention is the treaty; the OPCW is the organisation that implements and verifies it.
• Misconception: By 2013 every country had destroyed its chemical weapons. Correct: About 20 per cent of declared weapons, chiefly American and Russian, had not yet been destroyed.
• Misconception: All countries in the world had joined the OPCW by 2013. Correct: Six states, including Israel, Myanmar, North Korea, Angola, Egypt and South Sudan, had not fully joined.
• Misconception: The award praised only success. Correct: The Committee also criticised the United States and Russia for missing the destruction deadline.
• Misconception: The OPCW was founded in response to the Syrian civil war. Correct: It was founded in 1997, well before the Syrian conflict, though Syria's use of chemical weapons was one reason cited for the 2013 prize.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. What is the official citation for the Nobel Peace Prize 2013? [1 mark]

1. The citation reads "for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons", awarded to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Q2. In which year was the OPCW founded, and when did the Chemical Weapons Convention enter into force? [2 marks]

1. The OPCW was founded in 1997, the same year the Chemical Weapons Convention entered into force.

Q3. Explain the difference between the 1925 Geneva Protocol and the Chemical Weapons Convention. [4 marks]

1. The 1925 Geneva Protocol banned only the use of chemical weapons in war, leaving countries free to produce and store them, which kept a strong temptation to use them. The Chemical Weapons Convention, negotiated in 1992-93 and in force from 1997, closed this gap by banning use, production and storage together. It required countries to declare all their chemical weapons and production facilities, destroy them under supervision, and allow OPCW inspections, including inspections of any production site at just 76 hours' notice. This made the ban far more complete and enforceable than the earlier protocol had been.

Q4. Name two challenges that remained for the OPCW at the time of the 2013 award. [3 marks]

1. By 2013, about 20 per cent of declared chemical weapons, chiefly belonging to the United States and Russia, had not been destroyed despite the April 2012 deadline. Six states, including Israel, Myanmar, North Korea, Angola, Egypt and South Sudan, had not fully joined the Convention, meaning the ban was not yet truly universal.

Q5. Discuss why the Norwegian Nobel Committee chose to award the 2013 Peace Prize to the OPCW. [6 marks]

1. The Committee said the Convention and OPCW's work had turned chemical weapons into a taboo under international law, and pointed to their use again in the Syrian civil war as showing the urgent need to strengthen that taboo. It linked the award to Alfred Nobel's will, which named disarmament, fraternity between nations, and peace congresses as purposes of the prize, arguing that the Convention met all three because it bound every member equally, unlike nuclear arms deals that gave special status to nuclear powers. The Committee also used the prize to criticise the United States and Russia for missing their destruction deadline, and to press the six remaining non-member states to join. By 2013, the OPCW's 190 members covered 98 per cent of the world's population, territory and chemical industry, and it had destroyed around 80 per cent of declared weapons, which the Committee treated as evidence that near-total elimination of an entire weapon category was achievable, offering a possible model for other disarmament efforts.

Q6. How many member states did the OPCW have at the time of the award, and what share of the world's chemical industry did they represent? [2 marks]

1. The OPCW had 190 member states, representing 98 per cent of the world's chemical industry at the time of the award.

Q7. What role did Syria play in the background to the 2013 Peace Prize? [4 marks]

1. Chemical weapons were used again in the Syrian civil war shortly before the 2013 award, which the Nobel Committee cited as a reason for strengthening global efforts against such weapons. Syria then joined the OPCW around the time of the prize, creating an urgent and difficult task: destroying its chemical weapons under wartime conditions and a much tighter timeline than the OPCW normally worked with, which the Committee's chairman called a huge challenge.

Key takeaways

• The Nobel Peace Prize 2013 went entirely to the OPCW "for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons".
• The OPCW, founded in 1997, implements the Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans use, production and storage of such weapons.
• World War One caused around 85,000 deaths and 1.2 million injuries from chemical weapons, driving the 1925 Geneva Protocol ban.
• The 1925 Geneva Protocol banned use only; the 1992-93 Convention closed the gap by banning production and storage too.
• By 2013, 190 states had joined the OPCW, covering 98 per cent of world population, territory and chemical industry.
• About 80 per cent of declared chemical weapons and 90 per cent of production capacity had been destroyed by the award year.
• The Committee criticised the United States and Russia for missing the April 2012 destruction deadline.
• Six states, including Israel, Myanmar, North Korea, Angola, Egypt and South Sudan, had not fully joined the Convention by 2013.

Test yourself

Who received the Nobel Peace Prize 2013?

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons received the whole of the Nobel Peace Prize 2013.

What was the exact citation for the award?

The citation was "for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons", quoted exactly by the Nobel committee.

In which year was the OPCW founded?

The OPCW was founded in 1997, the same year the Chemical Weapons Convention entered into force.

What did the 1925 Geneva Protocol fail to ban?

The Geneva Protocol of 1925 banned only the use of chemical weapons, not their production or storage.

How many member states did the OPCW have at the time of the prize?

The OPCW had 190 member states, covering about 98 per cent of the world's population and territory.

Which two major powers did the Committee criticise for missing a deadline?

The Committee criticised the United States and Russia for not destroying their chemical weapons by the April 2012 deadline.

How much notice can OPCW inspectors give before inspecting a production facility?

OPCW inspectors have the right to inspect any production facility in a member state at just 76 hours' notice.

Which recent conflict did the Committee cite as a reason for the award?

The Committee cited the renewed use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war as a reason for the 2013 award.