Syria has officially become a member of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

The organisation's basic document – the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destructions, also known as the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), for short – will apply to it.

For several years, the OPCW has been calling on Syrian authorities to join the CWC but until recently there was no official response. On September 13, this year, OPCW Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu confirmed the receipt of an application from the Syrian Arab Republic (SAR) for accession to the CWC.

Syria becomes a 190th member-state of the OPCW. At present only six countries still remain outside the Convention. Two of them – Israel and Myanmar – way back in 1993 signed the CWC, thereby expressing their political support for its goals and principles. Only Angola, Egypt, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and South Sudan have taken no actions as regards to the Convention.

OPCW sources emphasise that Syria joined it in special conditions. The period that had passed from the moment of the filing of the application to the country's presentation of information on its stocks, was only seven days and complete accession process took only a month, although usually the procedure presupposes a much longer term.

On the night from September 27 to 28, the OPCW Executive Council approved a plan for the destruction of chemical weapons in Syria. The decision was adopted unanimously. Following that, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2,118 in support of the plan for the elimination of chemical weapons in the SAR. All the 15 countries of the UNSC voted for the document.

The first group of OPCW experts began an inspection in Syria on October 1, this year. The Plan envisages the completion of the destruction of the production equipment at Syrian facilities by November 1 and the stocks of chemical weapons in Syria are to be finally eliminated by the middle of next year. OPCW experts and the Director-General pointed out a constructive beginning of the mission in Syria and the readiness for co-operation manifested by the country's authorities.

The OPCW was founded in 1997. On October 11, 2013, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the OPCW to be a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. At a news conference held on the same day, OPCW Director-General Ahme Uzumcu expressed hope that the award bestowed upon the Organization would inspire the non-member countries to join the Organization. He emphasized that the Nobel Committee's decision was a pleasant surprise.

The purposes of the OPCW are chemical demilitarisation and nonproliferation of chemical weapons. The CWC was signed in Paris on January 13, 1993, by 130 countries and entered into forces on April 29, 1997. The CWC is the first multilateral treaty, which not only bans a whole type of weapons of mass destruction but also provides machinery for the checking of military and civilian chemical facilities.

The CWC signatory countries account for almost 98% of the world's population. Their territories take up almost the same percentage of the world's continental area. Ninety per cent of the world's chemical industry is concentrated in these countries.

The OPCW's supreme body is a Conference of the member-states. The Organization is headquartered in The Hague.

According to OPCW data, as of July 2013, an aggregate of 57 740 metric tonnes, or 81.1% of the world's announced stocks of chemical weapons had been eliminated.