Chemical Weapons Watchdog Wins Nobel Peace Prize

The award, to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, surprised some Nobel watchers partly because of the unprecedented nature of its current task: overseeing the destruction of a previously secret chemical weapons program quickly amid a raging civil war.

“We were aware that our work silently but surely was contributing to peace in the world,” Ahmet Uzumcu, the director general of the organization, told reporters at its headquarters in The Hague after the award was announced. “The last few weeks have brought this to the fore. The entire international community has been made aware of our work.”

Among diplomats, the prize was seen as the high point of a startling rise to prominence for an organization that had worked in relative obscurity. Some Syrians, however, took strong exception to the idea of lauding chemical weapons watchdogs when the bulk of the more than 100,000 deaths in Syria’s 31-month-old conflict have been caused by conventional weapons, like airstrikes and artillery and rocket fire.

Despite the urgency and danger of its task, the organization had not been seen as a likely winner. In the days leading up to the award, much attention was focused on individual candidates, including Malala Yousafzai, the 16-year-old Pakistani who risked her life to campaign for girls’ education and would have been the youngest recipient ever.

In its citation, the committee said the organization and the treaty under which it was founded in 1997 “have defined the use of chemical weapons as a taboo under international law.”

“Recent events in Syria, where chemical weapons have again been put to use, have underlined the need to enhance the efforts to do away with such weapons,” the citation said.

It was the second successive year that the panel, based in Oslo, had chosen an organization. The European Union won the 2012 prize.

Inspectors from the 189-member organization began arriving in Syria early this monthafter a chemical weapons attack killed hundreds of people on the outskirts of Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Aug. 21. Under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States, Syria agreed to join the treaty banning chemical weapons and become the 190th member of the organization.

The attack initially drew an American threat of military reprisal before Moscow and Washington reached a compromise arrangement to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stocks under international supervision.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize, hailed the award. “O.P.C.W. has worked tirelessly to rid the world of chemical weapons, and the organization is a deserved winner of the Nobel Peace Prize,” Mr. Gorbachev said in a statement issued by Green Cross International, an advocacy group based in Geneva that he founded, which has collaborated closely with the chemical weapons watchdog.

Angela Kane, the top United Nations disarmament official, who worked with the watchdog organization to lead an investigation into the Aug. 21 attack and other suspected uses of chemical weapons in Syria, said in a statement, “If he were alive today, Alfred Nobel would be gratified indeed that his committee has once again recognized disarmament for its great benefit to humanity.”

Thorbjorn Jagland, the former Norwegian prime minister who is chairman of the Nobel committee, said chemical weapons had been used by Hitler’s armies in their campaign of mass extermination and on many other occasions by states and terrorists. Mr. Jagland denied suggestions that the award represented a European-centered shift after last year’s award to the European Union. “It’s global,” he said.

The organization’s mission is to act as a watchdog in carrying out the Chemical Weapons Convention, which came into force in 1997 with four aims: to destroy all chemical weapons under international verification, to prevent the creation of new chemical weapons, to help countries protect themselves against chemical attack, and to foster international cooperation in the peaceful use of chemistry.

Since its creation, the organization has sent experts to carry out 5,000 inspections in 86 countries, working discreetly, almost shunning publicity, with the small number of signatory countries that acknowledge possessing chemical weapons. By far the biggest of these are Russia and the United States. Four countries besides Syria have not yet signed or ratified the treaty: Angola, Egypt, North Korea and South Sudan. Israel and Myanmar have signed the treaty, but their governments have not ratified it.

The Syria operation is unparalleled in its urgency and its hazards. The United Nations Security Council has set extremely tight deadlines for the mission, calling for the destruction of Syria’s arsenal of dangerous toxic substances by mid-2014.