The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was created on the ashes of wars that taught humanity one painful truth: chemical weapons do not distinguish between a soldier and a child. Their use was banned forever.
Yet, on the battlefields of Ukraine, this line has been crossed thousands of times.
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Independent reporting shows a disturbing pattern: Russia’s repeated use of toxic substances – including riot control agents – in direct violation of the Convention.
Russia kills civilians with banned weapons – and destroys every living force within its own state using the very poisons it invented.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed that a nerve agent of the “Novichok” group was used to poison Alexei Navalny in Russia in August 2020. Russian agents used a nerve agent from the same group against Julia and Sergei Skripal in the United Kingdom in 2018. The use of a “Novichok” nerve agent in this case was also confirmed independently by the OPCW.
Even as it defies this global norm, Moscow now seeks to return to the very council that enforces it.
This is not abstract diplomacy. The OPCW exists because the world agreed, after untold suffering, that certain weapons must never again be used.
Why should Kenyan readers and policy-makers care?
Because the integrity of multilateral instruments is only as strong as the willingness of member states to defend them. If a state credibly accused of breaching the Convention gains influence over the mechanisms designed to prevent and investigate such breaches, the deterrent power of the whole regime erodes.
The erosion of such institutions would bring inevitable disaster – the end of the world order as we know it.
That erosion would embolden not only distant powers, but also anyone tempted to weaponize chemistry against the civilians. Against the politicians. Against democracy itself.
Preserving the OPCW’s credibility is an act of leadership – not partisanship.
Kenya’s name stands for dignity and responsibility.
When any state, anywhere, uses chemical agents and faces no consequence, it weakens the entire structure of international security. Every violation tolerated becomes a precedent for the next one. The Convention, signed by nearly every nation on Earth, depends not on its text, but on the will of its members to defend it.
Kenya understands this better than most. From peacekeeping missions to mediation efforts across the continent, Nairobi has shown that adherence to rules brings stability, not submission.
Kenya has long stood as a voice of reason in Africa – a nation that believes law should prevail over the blatant, violent power of dictatorship; that protection of civilians is not a privilege but a duty.
That tradition gives Kenya a unique place in the coming elections to the Executive Council OPCW.
The world is watching whether the values that all of us defend in words will once again be affirmed in deeds.
Africa’s growing role in global governance gives its votes – and its silence – greater weight than ever before. As decisions are made in The Hague, history will not ask who lobbied hardest, but who stood for the principle that those who use poison cannot be trusted to guard the antidote.
This is not an appeal to take sides in a distant war.
It is a plea to defend the principle that protects lives.
Kenya is now advocating for Africa’s strong representation in the United Nations Security Council.
It is a just and worthy cause. Now the world is watching closely – will this representation bring merely transactional leverage to emerging regional powers, or will it embody the true, mature and humane leadership the world so urgently seeks?
The writer is Ukraine Ambassador to Kenya
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By Yurii Tokar