THE HAGUE, Netherlands —20 November 2019 — The Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), H.E. Mr Fernando Arias, is pleased to announce the decision of the OPCW-The Hague Award Committee to honour Dr Robert Mikulak (United States of America); Mr Cheng Tang (People’s Republic of China); and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) as joint recipients of the 2019 OPCW–The Hague Award.
The OPCW-The Hague Award is a legacy of the OPCW receiving the 2013 Nobel Prize for Peace and it recognises individuals and institutions that make an outstanding contribution towards the goals of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The Award was established in 2014 from the monetary prize accompanying the Nobel Prize for Peace and is supplemented by the City of The Hague.
OPCW’s Director-General, H.E. Mr Fernando Arias, congratulated the award recipients and stated: “This year’s three winners have contributed meaningfully to the Chemical Weapons Convention making progress in permanently eliminating chemical weapons while promoting chemistry for peace.“
While Dr Mikulak and Mr Tang have both been extensively involved in the negotiations of the CWC and have collaborated with the OPCW on a broad range of topics, IUPAC has contributed to providing the OPCW with objective scientific knowledge on emerging areas of science related to the CWC, as well as carrying out education and outreach activities to chemistry practitioners and the general public.
The award ceremony will be held on 25 November in The Hague, during the first day of the Twenty-Fourth Conference of the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention. The ceremony will be webcast from the official OPCW website (www.opcw.org).
Reproduced from OPCW release, 20 Nov 2019
See OPCW follow-up release, ‘Three Winners Receive 2019 OPCW-The Hague Award for Outstanding Contributions to a World Free of Chemical Weapons‘, 25 Nov 2019, and with more Information: The OPCW – The Hague Award | Interviews with Winners | Photo Gallery | Video of Ceremony
Watch the OPCW–The Hague Award presentation (broadcast 25 Nov 2019) , where Professor Chris Brett received the Award on behalf of the Union and all its volunteers.
– Interview with Christopher Brett, President-elect of IUPAC, one of the 2019 OPCW-The Hague Award winners
– Award announcement published in Chem Int Jan 2020, p. 26. In addition, see Sydnes, L. K. (2020). Chemical Weapons Convention Amended, Chemistry International, 42(1), 26-27; https://doi.org/10.1515/ci-2020-0109
– For a recent account of IUPAC’s commitment to supporting the norms of disarmament, see this IUPAC100 story by J. Forman and M. Cesa.
– See ‘Building broader and deeper links between OPCW and IUPAC‘ (project 2018-022-3-020)