After twenty years of negotiation within the framework of the Disarmament Conference, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction was signed in Paris between 13 and 15 January 1993. At the same time, the signatory States adopted a resolution instituting a Preparatory Commission, established in The Hague, with the aim of 'the prompt and effective establishment of the future Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons'. A variety of converging considerations led the Curatorium of the Academy of International Law to organize a workshop on this subject: first the very interesting nature of the highly sensitive problems raised by the destruction of chemical weapons, both on the strategic and political planes, as well as on technical, financial and ecological grounds; but also the originality and difficulty, from the legal standpoint, of the numerous questions which will inevitably arise in connection with the application of the Paris Convention. Finally, the Paris Convention, which is innovative in many respects, particularly in that it institutes international control over the whole of an industrial activity, may be used as a model in other areas of disarmament, in particular the area of nuclear weapons.