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Compliance revisited: an incremental approach to compliance in the biological and toxin weapons convention

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posted on 2023-06-09, 07:40 authored by James Revill
Since the collapse of negotiations around a protocol to the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) in 2001, states parties have begun to discuss several novel issues linked to the broader implementation of the BWC as part of a series of intersessional meetings. While initially fruitful, this approach has generated diminishing returns in the last five years. Moreover, in addressing these broader issues of implementation, biological disarmament diplomacy has largely neglected the thorny issue of compliance. Compliance with the BWC is more than a simple binary choice to sign a commitment not to develop or produce biological weapons. It requires the adherence to all the obligations, both negative and positive, undertaken by BWC states parties in signing and ratifying the convention. In the BWC context, this is complicated by the ambiguity surrounding certain obligations, changes in science and security, and the limited resource capacity of some states to fulfill their obligations. Under such circumstances, without episodically revisiting compliance, there remains the risk that BWC will become ever more fragmented, outmoded and poorly implemented. Although many states insist strengthening the convention can only be achieved through a multilaterally negotiated, legally binding verification protocol, this is not politically feasible for the foreseeable future. Nor is this necessarily true; an incremental approach to strengthening the convention could be pursued, dealing with mutually reinforcing components of the regime in a balanced manner and laying the foundations for future work, if and when it becomes politically expedient to proceed. This Occasional Paper proposes a number of activities that could be pursued as part of an incremental approach to revisiting compliance with the BWC.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) Occasional Paper #31

Publisher

James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS)

Pages

32.0

Department affiliated with

  • SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit Publications

Research groups affiliated with

  • Harvard Sussex Program Publications

Institution

Middlebury Institute if International Studies at Monterey

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2017-08-23

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2017-08-23

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2017-08-23

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