The global chemical weapons watchdog charged with overseeing destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile during a civil war won the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize yesterday.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a relatively small organisation with a modest budget, dispatched its experts after a sarin gas attack killed more than 1,400 people in August.
Their deployment, supported by the United Nations, helped avert a US strike against President Bashar al-Assad.
Thorbjoern Jagland, the head of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, said that the award was a reminder to nations with big stocks, such as the US and Russia, to get rid of their own reserves “especially because they are demanding that others do the same, like Syria”.
“We now have the opportunity to get rid of an entire category of weapons of mass destruction. That would be a great event in history if we could achieve that,” he said.
The OPCW’s mission was unprecedented in taking place during a civil war that has riven the country and killed over 100,000 people. Members of the OPCW team came under sniper fire on August 26, but OPCW head Ahmet Uzumcu said this week Syrian officials were cooperating in the process.
The award marks a return to the classical disarmament roots of the prize after some recent awards, such as to the European Union last year and US President Barack Obama in 2009.
Those awards led to criticism that the committee was out of line with the spirit of prize, founded by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.
His 1895 will says the prize should go to one of three causes – “fraternity between nations”, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.
Washington blamed President Assad for the August sarin attack, a charge he denied, instead blaming rebels.
Facing the threat of a US military strike, he eventually agreed to destroy Syria’s sizeable chemical weapons programme and allow in OPCW inspectors.
Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai, shot in the head a year ago by the Taliban, had been the bookmakers’ favourite to win the prize for her campaign for girls’ right to education.
The OPCW only appeared in speculation in the final hours before the prize.
The $1.25 million prize will be presented in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.
The OPCW, based in The Hague in the Netherlands, has about 500 staff and an annual budget of under $100 million.
The OPCW, which has 189 member states, said Syria was cooperating and it could eliminate its chemical weapons by mid-2014, provided they received support from all sides in its civil war.
Chemical weapons experts believe Syria has roughly 1,000 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve gas, some of it stored as bulk raw chemicals and some of it already loaded onto missiles, warheads or rockets.
Under a Russian-US deal struck last month, Syria must render useless all production facilities and weapons-filling equipment by November, a process begun over the past several weeks.
A look at the prize
• The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded 94 times between 1901 and 2013. The 125 winners comprise 100 individuals and 22 separate organisations, the International Committee of the Red Cross having won the prize three times and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees twice.
• Only two peace prizes have been shared between three winners. The 1994 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin; and the 2011 prize went to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman. Yemeni journalist Karman was only 32, and was the youngest ever laureate by 11 days.
• The oldest winner is Joseph Rotblat, who was 87 years old when he was awarded the prize in 1995. Only 15 women have received the peace prize.
• The Vietnamese politician Le Duc Tho is the only person to have refused the prize. He was awarded it jointly with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1973 for negotiating the Vietnam peace accord. Kissinger never travelled to Oslo to deliver his acceptance speech.
• Three laureates were under arrest when they were awarded the prize: German pacifist and journalist Carl von Ossietzky in 1935, Burmese politician Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991 and Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo in 2010.
• Both Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler were nominated for the prize – Stalin in 1945 and 1948 for his efforts to end World War II, and Hitler in 1939, although the nomination was never intended to be taken seriously.