Geneva protocol

American military leaders’ position was that herbicides did not constitute chemical weapons under the Geneva Protocol, which the U.S. had yet to ratify.

On more than one occasion in Eastern Ghouta, chemical weapons - banned by the Geneva protocol and the Chemical Weapons Convention - were used to attack Douma.

The 1925 Geneva Protocol was intended to ban military use of chemical weapons in warfare.

“The villa is symmetric, which is practical for meetings. We can give each delegation the exact same number of rooms,” Marion Bordier Bueschi, acting head of Geneva protocol, told reporters.

The Geneva Protocol exception for the domestic use of tear gas specifies that any chemicals used on civilians must have effects that “disappear within a short time.”