ABSTRACT
7.1 At the heart of disarmament is the destruction of weapons whose development, production, retention, transfer, and use – as well as stockpiling – are prohibited. Accordingly, each of the global disarmament treaties provides for stockpile destruction. In most cases, the deadline is set in terms of months or years. This is the case for the 1971 Biological Weapons Convention, 1 the 1992 Chemical Weapons Convention, 2 the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, 3 and the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions. 4 Exceptionally, the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons 5 (not yet in force, as of writing) defers the decision as to that deadline to the first meeting of its states parties that will be held following the treaty’s entry into force. Two disarmament treaties allow states parties to extend their respective deadlines: the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
