New Delhi, July 10 -- DAMASCUS - Seven months after the fall of Bashar al-Assad and more than a decade after his government's chemical attack on Ghouta, Syria has recovered a narrow measure of international standing. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons announced Thursday that it has restored Syria's voting rights within the body, citing concrete steps taken by the government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa toward fulfilling Syria's obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

The restoration is procedurally limited but directionally significant. Syria's rights had been suspended since 2021 - not as a symbolic sanction but as a formal institutional consequence of the previous government's documented failure to comp...