Identifying the Perpetrators of Chemical Attacks in Syria: The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons as Part of the Fight Against Impunity?

In June 2018, the Conference of States Parties of the 1993 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction (Chemical Weapons Convention) decided to create an Investigation and Identification Team. This is a new mechanism within the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Technical Secretariat ‘to identify the perpetrators of the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic’. This article analyses the background and main features of this decision and draws some preliminary conclusions on the role of the Investigation and Identification Team and its potential impact for the investigation and prosecution of crimes linked to the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Thus, after describing the events surrounding various fact-finding missions in Syria under the auspices of the OPCW and the United Nations, it considers the legal basis to interpret the Chemical Weapons Convention as enabling the OPCW to put in place arrangements to identify the perpetrators of the use of chemical weapons in Syria and elsewhere.