RIYADH: Saudi Arabia was elected on Wednesday to the presidency of the executive council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for 2022-2023.

The council will be chaired by Ziyad bin Maashi Al-Attiyah, the Saudi ambassador to the Netherlands and the Kingdom’s permanent representative to the OPCW.

The council is the executive body of the OPCW, and works to promote effective implementation and compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention, which came into force in 1997. 

The executive council consists of 41 OPCW member states that are elected by the conference of the states parties and rotate every two years.

It also supervises the activities of the technical secretariat of the organization and considers the organization’s draft budget, the draft report, and the special reports it submits to the Conference of States Parties to the Convention.

The election of the Kingdom comes in light of its continuous achievements in the field of work with international organizations, and also reflects its pivotal role and unremitting efforts in dealing with transparency and credibility with the data of international events in this field, and the extent to which the member states of the council and the organization appreciate this role.

Saudi Arabia was one of the founding countries of the organization, and has been an elected member of the executive council since its formation in 1997.