Sovereign equality under the chemical weapons convention: Doughnuts over holes

Abstract

By the very nature of treaties, States give up some of their sovereignty in order to achieve a common, desired objective between the parties to the treaty. When it comes to the Chemical Weapons Convention, however, commentators overly emphasize its impact on State sovereignty and equality without acknowledging the ways that it actually preserves State sovereignty and equality, arguably better than other multilateral treaties. This article seeks to bring balance to the debate by focussing on these relatively innovative and much overlooked provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention, with the hope of encouraging the last seven non-member States to join and the rest to have even greater confidence in this most important of disarmament regimes. © Oxford University Press 2010; all rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.