Experts Meeting in Advance of the 2011 BWC Review Conference

By David Freeman The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), the first convention that banned all member states equally from developing, producing, or stockpiling an entire category of weapons of mass destruction, entered into force in 1975. Formulated during the Cold War, the convention was a compromise document that was mainly declarative and did not include built-in mechanisms for checking and verifying compliance.

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For many years, discussions were held at five-year review conferences on including a verification mechanism, with the goal of strengthening enforcement. In 2001, the Bush administration announced unilaterally that it had vigorous objections to including such a mechanism; this position marked a new low point and endangered continuation of the convention. In order to resolve the crisis and keep the convention alive, it was decided that annual expert meetings would be held in between the five-year review conferences and would discuss the following issues:

• State legislation prompted by the convention
• Bio-safety and bio-security to prevent biological terrorism
• Epidemiological monitoring and reviews of causes of diseases
• Codes of conduct for scientists and professional organizations in the life sciences
• Investigation of and response to alleged use of biological weapons

The subject of the meeting held in late August 2010 at the UN in Geneva was assistance and coordination between convention member states and international professional organizations in the event of the alleged use of biological weapons. This includes improving capabilities in identification, diagnosis, supervision, monitoring, and surveillance of diseases and causes of disease. In the event of alleged use, the response must be carried out simultaneously on two tracks. One is investigative, that is, discovering who carried out the attack, and the other is handling the consequences. Both require varied professional capabilities of the state, as well as cooperation with other states and with international organizations such as the World Health Organization. The developed (Western) countries generally have good capabilities of detecting, identifying, diagnosing, monitoring, tracking, and treating biological diseases and causes of disease. The capabilities required for managing natural infectious diseases and diseases intentionally caused are highly similar. Generally, the difference is not in the knowledge and technology infrastructure, but in the work procedures and organization. It is commonly thought that the level of biological risk in the world is growing. SARS and H1N1 have proven that it is hard to anticipate if and when a new disease will appear naturally, and we must be prepared for that scenario. In addition, dramatic developments in the life sciences such as “synthetic biology” are likely to lead to the development of new drugs, but they also have destructive potential for exploitation and development of deadly biological weapons by states and terrorist organizations. From the meeting it appears that many countries are making an effort to close gaps and improve their capabilities for dealing with causes of disease from both natural and man-made sources. Developing countries are attempting to receive professional and financial assistance from developed countries. Since biological elements know no borders, the developed countries have a clear interest in helping poor countries, which in many cases are the source of the biological risk. The United States, Canada, and the European Union have invested extensive efforts and resources to raise the level of the health systems in developing countries, though still not to the latter's complete satisfaction. At the same time, developed countries may hesitate to transfer their know-how and their most advanced methods and infrastructures because biomedical technologies are often dual use and can be used by hostile elements in the development of biological weapons. Therefore, the aid is given in a controlled manner while taking this risk into account. At the Geneva meeting, one contention was that in recent years the convention’s activity has been overly diverted toward coping with the causes of disease and epidemics and related inter-state cooperation. This counters the convention’s original mandate as a security mission: to be a mechanism for supervision and control of the ban on developing, stockpiling, and using biological weapons. The question, therefore, is the focus of the seventh review conference in 2011. Undoubtedly the US, which declared last year that the convention is a very important tool and that it intends to support it, will hope to use it to increase the activity related to President Obama’s strategy of confronting biological risks, published in December 2009. This involves improving global capabilities of coping with diseases and epidemics from any source – which means, besides investing resources domestically, significant international aid – along with strict bio-security, and preventing dual use and the exploitation of innovations in the life sciences for developing and producing biological weapons, especially by terrorist elements. However, there are those who consider it more important to deal with improving the commitment of states to confidence building measures, especially since no obligatory verification mechanism will be implemented in the foreseeable future. According to the convention, states are obligated to submit periodic reports on infrastructures, events, and actions concerning outbreaks of diseases and epidemics, but in the absence of a binding mechanism, the response has been limited. There is, therefore, a push to focus on this as a major topic at the next conference. Other subjects that are likely to come up are requiring governments to institute higher education programs for raising awareness on the convention and its ramifications; the risks inherent in the advanced fields of biological research; and a procedural change, whereby an annual conference will be held that can make binding decisions. This year saw the end of the multi-sessional process launched at the previous conference, conducted according to the preestablished plan and marked by discussions that were professional and to the point. The two main topics were confronting natural and intentional biological risks, and the development and assimilation of mechanisms for supervising dual use biological research, with the goal of preventing the possible flow of dangerous biological elements and sensitive information to terrorists. In the coming year, work will be conducted in various forums, including preparatory work initiated by the administrative body (the Implementation Support Unit), and with the elected chairman, in order to prepare the next review conference. The success of this conference depends on this preparatory work.

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