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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
182966
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| Summary/Abstract |
The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) are key components of the international arms-control landscape. Yet the two conventions differ widely, particularly in the ways that are available to treaty parties to resolve any questions about compliance with the treaties. Both contain language concerning consultation and cooperation, but the CWC also has extensive procedures available to investigate allegations of noncompliance. This article reviews these differences in the conventions and explains, in part, how and why they came about. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has engaged in several consultations regarding compliance issues, but the OPCW publishes virtually nothing about the topics of the consultations or their frequency, findings, or conclusions. An exception, perhaps, is the OPCW’s work regarding Syrian use of chemical weapons (CW). Moreover, thus far, no treaty party has called for a challenge inspection to officially investigate perhaps the most serious allegations of treaty violations: Syrian and Russian alleged use of CW. The BWC states parties conducted one formal consultation raised by Cuba, alleging that the United States dropped biological agents on the island nation from airplanes to cause an animal epidemic. The consultation reached no official conclusion. The article goes on to praise the work of Raymond Zilinskas debunking the allegations through a careful scientific review of the Cuban claims. The article discusses the consequences of secrecy surrounding the CWC consultation process and laments that the BWC does not have the institutional capacity to carry on the type of analysis that Zilinskas undertook discrediting the Cuban allegations.
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| 2 |
ID:
018101
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| Publication |
Fall-Winter 2000.
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| Description |
24-42
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| 3 |
ID:
107464
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| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The Seventh Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention in December 2011 provides an opportunity to modernize the treaty to better address the challenges of the 21st century. The key to this modernization is to redesign the treaty's Confidence-Building Measures (CBMs), the only formal mechanism for increasing transparency and demonstrating compliance with the treaty, to address changes in the global scientific, health, and security environments since the end of the Cold War. The scope of the CBMs should be expanded beyond state-run biological warfare programs to encompass a broader array of threats to global security, such as biological terrorism, laboratory accidents, dual-use research, and disease pandemics. Modernizing the CBM mechanism to take into account these new risks would extend the transparency-enhancing benefits of CBMs to a range of new and important topics, such as biosafety, laboratory biosecurity, and dual-use research oversight; make the CBMs and the treaty itself more relevant to the concerns and priorities of more states; and build on progress made during the recent series of intersessional meetings. To accomplish this, the CBMs need to be revised to shift their focus from hardware, the dual-use capabilities relevant to the treaty, to software, the political and legal institutions that govern the development and use of these capabilities. A more modern CBM mechanism should encourage greater participation in the confidence-building process, improve international cooperation against the full spectrum of biological risks, and promote the goal of universal membership in the treaty.
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