Jack Ooms

Arie Jacobus Johannes "Jack" Ooms (1925–1999) was a Dutch chemist, diplomat and chemical weapons researcher. As head of Dutch chemical defence research, Ooms worked for 23 years for the eradication of chemical warfare, which he believed could best be achieved by a combination of effective chemical protection and international chemical arms control and a permanent, multilateral ban on chemical weapons, as implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

In 1942, during the German occupation of The Netherlands in the Second World War (1940-1945), Ooms entered the University of Utrecht to study chemistry. In 1943 he refused to sign the Nazi loyalty declaration and became an Engelandvaarder by escaping to the United Kingdom by way of Spain and Portugal, much of it on foot. He joined the U.S. Army and, in August 1944, returned to mainland Europe with the Allied landings in southern France. After completing his MSc degree and national military service, he joined the newly formed Chemical Laboratory of the National Defence Research Organization. In 1952 he finished his studies, and was appointed director of the Chemical Laboratory in 1965. In 1978, Ooms was appointed director of the newly merged Technological Laboratory RVO-TNO and the Chemical Laboratory, where he remained until his retirement in 1988.

Ooms’ active participation in the negotiation of a permanent, multilateral ban on chemical weapons, began in 1969 when he joined as technical adviser the Netherlands’ delegation to the Eighteen Nation Committee on Disarmament (ENCD) in Geneva. The ENCD (1962–69) was one of several predecessors to the current UN disarmament organization, the Conference on Disarmament (CD). He would become the only delegate to the Conference on Disarmament that continuously participated over the full twenty-year course of these negotiations, which culminated in the adoption of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) for signature by the United Nations General Assembly in 1992.

Subsequently, he served on the Dutch delegation to the OPCW Preparatory Commission which prepared the founding of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), with its headquarters in The Hague. In 1991 Ooms was appointed to the UN Special Commission then being established to oversee Iraq's renunciation of weapons of mass destruction. This work continued to engage him in the months immediately prior to his death in 1999.