2013 Nobel Peace Prize

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  Ahmet Üzümcü, Director-General of OPCW, the organization that won this year's Nobel Prize in Peace. Photo courtesy of www.opcw.com

• 2013 Nobel Peace Prize
  This year's Nobel Peace Prize goes to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons. The decision comes from the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
  Chemical weapons were used to a considerable degree as early as during World War One. Though the 1925 Geneva Convention prohibited the use of these weapons, it never prohibited the production or storage thereof. Said OPCW Director-General Ahmet Üzümcü to media upon hearing the news of the Nobel Prize: ”The decision by the Nobel Committee to bestow this year’s Peace Prize on the OPCW is a great honour for our Organisation. We are a small organization, which for over 16 years, and away from the glare of international publicity, has shouldered an onerous but noble task – to act as the guardian of the global ban on chemical weapons that took effect in 1997. That year, a hundred-year effort was crowned with success as the Chemical Weapons Convention entered into force. Our organization was tasked to verify the elimination of chemical weapons from the world and to encourage all nations to adhere to this hard-earned norm.”

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