6th Review Conference of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention
Geneva, 20 November – 8 December 2006

Between 20 November and 8 December 2006 the States party to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) met for the 6th Review Conference. The procedures and agenda for the three-week activity were adopted by the Preparatory Committee, which met between 26–28 April 2006.

The BTWC entered into force in 1975. Since then the States Parties have come together every five years (with one exception) to assess the status of the convention and update the prohibition against biological weapons (BW). Review conferences were held in 1980, 1986, 1991, 1996 and 2001–2002.

The 5th Review Conference of 2001-2002 ended in failure. As a consequence, the norm against the weaponization of disease had been neither assessed nor updated since the 4th Review Conference in 1996. It was therefore of the utmost importance that the 6th Review Conference achieve its basic aim of a full review of the BTWC articles and the impact of scientific and technological developments on the objectives and purpose of the convention. Following the 5th Review Conference, the States Parties embarked on a cycle of annual meetings to discuss ways and means for improving (national) implementation of the BTWC and enhancing the relevance of the BTWC. Each of these one-week meetings, which were held towards year's end, was prepared by a preceding two-week meeting of national experts. Although originally conceived as a measure to avoid three years of diplomatic inactivity between the 5th and 6th Review Conferences, virtually all diplomats found the information exchanges much more useful than they had anticipated when agreeing to a limited set of discussion topics at the second part of the 5th Review Conference in 2002. As a result, through 2006 there was a growing anticipation that the States Parties would agree to a second cycle of annual meetings between the 6th and the 7th Review Conferences. Finally, there was also an expectation that the convention would actually be strengthened at the Review Conference. Given the termination of the negotiation of a legally-binding protocol that would have equipped the BTWC with a series of transparency-enhancing and verification tools in 2001 (and the subsequent failure of the 5th Review Conference), any notion of ‘strengthening the BTWC’ was necessarily limited:

• drawing conclusions (and obligations for States Parties) from the 2003-05 annual meetings and inserting them into the Final Report of the 6th Review Conference;
• restoring the relevance of the Confidence-Building Measures (CBMs), improving and simplifying the process of the annual CBM submissions, and expanding the scope of the CBMs into new areas of relevance to the convention; and,
• the agreement of a work programme for 2007–10 that would lay the groundwork for substantive improvement of the BTWC subsequent to the 7th Review Conference in 2011.

Was the 6th Review Conference a success? Yes, for the simple reason it was not a failure. Diplomats applauded upon agreeing on the Final Report. It was a highpoint after another disappointing year at the Conference on Disarmament of the United Nations, failure of the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2005, and other failures to make progress in international non-proliferation negotiations. At the end of 2005 there was a general pessimism about a possible successful outcome of the 6th BTWC Review Conference; indeed, the mere notion of 'success' lacked any common understanding. It was remarkable how a 'can do' motivation emerged throughout 2006, producing by September a silent consensus among States Parties that failure was not an option.

Outside observers, however, are more reserved about the outcome. While a Final Report was agreed, the text does not move the convention much beyond what had already been agreed ten years earlier at the 4th Review Conference. A nucleus of an institutional setup in support of the BTWC, the Implementation Support Unit, was approved for the next five years. Otherwise nothing of essence was added to the CBM process, and the second cycle of annual meetings was denied any of the substantive programme proposals. Even the outcomes of the first cycle of annual meetings were merely noted. In the end, the greatest contribution of the 6th Review Conference may have been its ability to remove the detritus left behind from 2001. Defining the path forward may be one of the core goals to be developed during the 2007–10 annual meetings.

During the 6th Review Conference, the BWPP reported daily on the discussions and maintained a dedicated website to enable fast access to conference documents, press discussions and analysis. The daily reports were also distributed via the BWPP Biological and Chemical Weapons Discussion Forum and a dedicated list serve. The outputs from the 3-week event are grouped together on these web pages.

The BWPP gratefully acknowledges the financial support by the Ploughshares Fund as well as other sponsors.

The BioWeapons Prevention Project is dedicated to reinforcing the norm against the weaponization of disease. It is a global civil society activity that tracks governmental and other behaviour under the treaties that codify the norm. It nurtures and is empowered by an international network, and acts both through that network and its publication