The Chemical Weapons Convention requires each State Party to submit a number of declarations regarding its possession, transfer, receipt of chemical weapons and its general plan to destroy the chemical weapons. There are also declaration requirements regarding old and abandoned chemical weapons as well as chemical weapons production facilities.
According to Article VI of the Convention, each State Party has the right to develop, produce, otherwise acquire, retain, transfer and use toxic chemicals and their precursors for purposes not prohibited under the Convention. To ensure that such activities are in accordance with the obligations under the Convention, the Convention requires each State Party to make annual declarations and subject the toxic chemicals and their precursors to verification measures as provided in the Annex on Implementation and Verification (or the "Verification Annex") of the Convention.
The types of declarations required to be submitted by State Parties under the Verification Annex basically include:
- annual declarations on the activities of the preceding year;
- annual declarations on the anticipated activities of the next year;
- declarations to amend previously submitted information or additionally planned activities.
Facilities with production and/or other specified activities exceeding the following thresholds are required to submit annual declarations under the Convention:
| Schedule 1 - (pdf format) |
where annual production exceeds 100g of Schedule 1 chemicals in the aggregate. |
| Schedule 2 - (pdf format) |
where production, processing and consumption exceeds : 1 kg of a chemical listed in Part A of Schedule 2 and designated with an "*" ; 100 kg of a chemical listed in Part A of Schedule 2 but is not designated with an "*" ; or 1 tonne of a chemical listed in Part B of Schedule 2. |
| Schedule 3 - (pdf format) |
where production exceeds 30 tonnes of a Schedule 3 chemical. |
| UDOCs - | where production exceeds 200 tonnes of Unscheduled Discrete Organic Chemicals or 30 tonnes of a PSF-chemical. |
To ensure that Hong Kong is able to provide the necessary information to the Central People's Government for the purpose of fulfilling the declaration requirements under the Convention, the HKSAR Government has introduced reporting and notification requirements with regard to chemicals under the Chemical Weapons (Convention) Ordinance (Cap. 578).