Nobel Peace Prize Exhibition 2013: Combating Chemical Weapons

Nobel Peace Prize Exhibition 2013: Combating Chemical Weapons

In the ninth consecutive Nobel Peace Prize Exhibition, the audience will get to experience how the OPCW inspectors monitor, identify and destroy chemical weapons. This year’s photographer is the world renowned Paolo Pellegrin from the photo agency Magnum Photos.

Paolo Pellegrin has followed the inspectors closely in the weeks after it was announced that The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is awarded the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. With American war correspondent and writer Scott Anderson’s short texts, Pellegrin’s graphic and strong black and white images provide a rare insight into the daily lives of the weapon inspectors.

– Paolo Pellegrin has had a unique access to document the sometimes hazardous work of the OPCW, and a photographer of his caliber gives this year’s Nobel Peace Prize Exhibition a genuine power, says Bente Erichsen, Executive Director of the Nobel Peace Center. –Pellegrin’s images allow the public close access to some of the unsung heroes of the world, and we very much look forward to opening our doors in December. 

The images in the exhibition Combating Chemical Weapons are taken in Libya, the Netherlands, Belgium and a country in Eastern Europe, and documents OPCW’s work abolishing chemical weapons of today and from WWI.

Very few have been allowed insight into the daily work of the weapon inspectors. In this exhibition, visitors can see and experience some of the hazardous work themselves.

The making of the official Nobel Peace Prize Exhibition is an annual occurrence that spans a mere eight weeks, from the Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee announces the new Peace Prize laureate, to the exhibition is opened by the OPCW Director-General in December. Combating Chemical Weapons is the ninth Nobel Peace Prize Exhibition in the row.

The celebration of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate continues with free entry for all 12–30 December. The exhibition period is 12 December 2013 through 23 November 2014.

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Facts about Paolo Pellegrin
(b. 1964, Italy) Paolo Pellegrin has been a member of the prestigious agency Magnum Photos since 2005. He is a contract photographer for Newsweek magazine in the US and Zeit magazine in Germany. Pellegrin is the winner of many awards, including ten World Press Photo awards and numerous Photographer of the Year awards, as well as a Leica Medal of Excellence, an Olivier Rebbot Award, the Hansel-Meith Preis, and the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award. In 2006, he was assigned the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography. He has published many photo books. He lives in New York and London.

Facts about Scott Anderson 
(b. 1959, USA) Scott Anderson is an American journalist, novelist, and veteran war correspondent.  His most recent nonfiction book is Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East (2013). He is also the author of The Man Who Tried to Save the World (1999), and the novels Moonlight Hotel (2006) and Triage (1998). He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine, and has written for GQ, Vanity Fair and Esquire, among other publications.

Pellegrin and Anderson have worked together on nearly two dozen article assignments around the world over the past two decades, including in conflict zones such as Darfur, Lebanon and Israel/Palestine.  They collaborated together on the book, DoubleBlind: The Lebanon Conflict (2006).

Facts about The OPCW
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was established in 1997 to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).

The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) prohibits the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention, transfer or use of chemical weapons.

The OPCW’s main objectives are:
- verifying the safe destruction of all existing chemical weapons.
- ensuring that chemical industry does not develop new chemical weapons.
- providing assistance and protection to States against chemical threats and risks.
- promoting the peaceful use of chemistry.

The Secretariat staff of about 500 people, of which 125 are inspectors, carries out the daily work of the OPCW.  190 States are members of the OPCW, representing 98 percent of the world’s population and land mass. The last state to become a member was Syria, on 14 September, 2013. Israel and Myanmar have signed, but not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention. Angola, Egypt, North Korea and South Sudan have neither signed nor acceded to the Chemical Weapons convention. Official languages in the OPCW are: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. The OPCW is an independent organisation with a working relationship with the United Nations. The OPCWs headquarters are in The Hague in The Netherlands.

Image caption:
OPCW inspectors demonstrate the use of hazardous materials suits at a chemical weapons site in Libya. Photo: Paolo Pellegrin / Magnum Photos for The Nobel Peace Center.