Chemical industry safety, security guidelines addressed during workshop

Chemical industry officials said the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) would be at the forefront of establishing guidelines promoting safety and security.

During the recent second edition of the Workshop on Developing Tools for Chemical Safety and Security at Almaty in Kazakhstan, OPCW officials met with personnel representing the Government of Kazakhstan to reaffirm the OPCW would facilitate the development of norms and exchange best practices in future capacity-building programs.

“Kazakhstan is strongly committed to continuing our efforts to mitigate chemical weapons threats, enhancing chemical security and improving the coordination of chemical security threat reduction programmes and activities across the globe,” said Dastan Yeleukenov, director of the Department of International Security, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The forum, which was attended by 21 experts from OPCW Member States, served as a cross-sector partnership in chemical safety and security management for the chemical industry, noting participants drafted standards on chemical safety and security included in a set of non-binding guidelines.

The OPCW, the implementing body of the Chemical Weapons Convention, oversees the overarching global goal of permanently eliminating chemical weapons. Since the Convention’s creation in 1997, it is the most successful disarmament treaty eliminating an entire class of weapons of mass destruction.