OPCW strips Syria of voting rights over chemical weapons use​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Syria loses rights and privileges at watchdog in unprecedented rebuke

Syrian soldiers are seen cheering President Bashar Al Assad during his visit to Al Habit on the southern edges of the Idlib province, in a picture released on October 22, 2019. AFP / Syrian Presidency Facebook page

A Turkish gendarme retrieves the body of Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi from a beach in Turkey. Reuters

The guided-missile destroyer 'USS Porter' conducts strikes while in the Mediterranean Sea, on April 7, 2017. AFP / US NAVY

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency on October 31, 2013, shows the remains of a mortar after an alleged mortar attack by rebel fighters on the Damascus mixed Christian-Druze suburb of Jaramana. AFP / Sana

Displaced Syrians from the south of Idlib province sit out in the open in the countryside west of the town of Dana in the north-west Syrian region on December 23, 2019. AFP

This picture shows a general view of an overcrowded displacement camp near the village of Qah near the Turkish border in Syria's north-west Idlib province, on October 28, 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic crisis. AFP

A picture taken on March 23, 2019, shows the last ISIS bastion in the eastern Syrian village of Baghuz after the defeat of the group. The Kurdish-led forces pronounced the end of ISIS regime on March 23, 2019, after flushing out the diehard militants from their very last bastion in eastern Syria. AFP

Anti-government activists gesture as they gather on the streets of Daraa, 100 kilometres south of the capital Damascus, on March 23, 2011. AFP

Syria's President Bashar Al Assad heading a cabinet meeting in the presidential palace in Damascus in 2013. Sana / AFP

A picture taken on October 3, 2015 shows a Russian army pilot leaving the cockpit of a Russian Sukhoi Su-25 ground attack aircraft at the Hmeimim airbase in the Syrian province of Latakia. AFP

Members of the Free Syrian Army raise their weapons during a patrol in Idlib in north-west Syria on February 18, 2012. AFP

Syrian President Bashar Al Assad is shown shaking hands with government troops in Eastern Ghouta, in the leader's first trip to the former rebel enclave outside Damascus in years, in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on March 18, 2018. Syrian Presidency Facebook page / AFP

Militant fighters wave flags as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province, on June 30, 2014. Reuters

The global chemical weapons watchdog imposed an unprecedented punishment on Syria on Wednesday in response to the Assad regime’s toxic gas attacks over the past decade.

The move to strip Syria of its “rights and privileges” was backed by 87 member states of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

The rebuke means Syria loses its voting rights at the watchdog, to stand for election in its executive council, or to hold any office in the agency. It's the first time a OPCW member has been hit with such a sanction.

France initially put forward the proposal -- with support from another 45 countries -- to condemn Syria, with Paris’s envoy telling the OPCW “we owe this to the Syrian people”.

Iran and Russia were among the 15 countries to vote against the motion.

"The member states of the OPCW have sent a strong message: repeated use of chemical weapons by Syria is unacceptable for the international community," the French delegation to the watchdog said.

The motion says that Damascus will be suspended until member states decide that it has fully declared all of its chemical weapons and facilities.

An OPCW investigation last year found there were reasonable grounds to believe the Syrian military assaulted the town of Latamneh with sarin and chlorine gas attacks in 2017.

Syrian authorities then missed a 90-day deadline to declare the weapons used in the attacks and comply with OPCW inspections. Damascus has rejected accusations it used chemical weapons during the Syrian civil war.

Fernando Arias, director general of the OPCW, said Syria’s responses to inquiries about its chemical weapons still "cannot be considered accurate and complete" despite many years of inspections.

Syria joined the watchdog in 2013 after a gas attack that killed 1,400 people in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, which was blamed on the Syrian government.