Report on the Conclusion to the Review Conference

Richard Guthrie has released his final report “The Final Day (and a half): Closure of the Conference.” In it he provides some detail of the struggles of the final hours of the RevCon to reach consensus. He also begins the discussion (which will undoubtedly be the subject of many papers written in the coming months) of what happened to derail the RevCon, what it means for future meetings regarding the CWC, and how the OPCW is changing as CW stockpiles are destroyed and its mandate shifts. The conference was meticulously planned, began with great optimism, but ended with disagreement, all night sessions, and weakened statements.

Hopefully the text of the declaration will be released later today. It will be interesting to read the official final document… and the postmortem analysis articles that will soon follow.