States Parties To the Cwc Must Also Consider the Threat Posed by Non-States

Abstract

The possibility of unauthorized access to the chemical weapons and/or the chemical agents that could be weaponized, without much difficulty in the hands of such non-state actors who wouldn’t mind using them in their attacks against unprotected population centers, must be taken seriously into consideration. While the CWC was never designed to address non-state actors, as we now see in the Middle East and elsewhere, it places more burden on all of us to safely eliminate any remaining chemical weapons arsenals in a timely way before they are stolen, lost, or proliferated to non-state actors for nefarious purposes.