Statement Issued: 19/08/03 Page Update: 20/08/03 Geneva

Statement by the BWPP
19 August 2003

1. Mr President, Distinguished Representatives, it is a great honour to be invited to make a statement to this Expert Group meeting, which I am doing as Director of the new international NGO, the BioWeapons Prevention Project (BWPP). The BWPP monitors political, societal, scientific and technological developments with possible implications for the use of disease as a weapon, and the implementation of the legal and political obligations of states under the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), the final declarations of the BTWC Review Conferences, and other relevant international treaties and agreements. The BWPP will also track other efforts to strengthen the norms against the weaponization of disease. Civil society organizations concerned with the BW threat make up the BWPP membership. They come from the arms control and disarmament community, as well as from related fields, such as the biological sciences and biotechnology, health and safety, environment, and ethics. Together the BWPP member organizations already represent considerable expertise, which can only increase as the membership grows.

2. The BTWC was the first disarmament treaty in the true sense of the word. Today it needs to be strengthened in the light of the challenges of BW proliferation, terrorism with biological agents, and the developments in the fields of biology and biotechnology. Particularly the terrorist strikes of 11 September 2001 against New York and Washington, DC, the subsequent attacks with mail-delivered anthrax spores in the United States, and the anxieties in many other countries brought about by hoaxes inspired by the anthrax letters have generated a global sense of threat and vulnerability. One effect of the new terrorism is that it highlights the vulnerabilities of each individual society, and that it leads to an almost natural reflex to rely on national measures only to deal with them. Yet, no state, however powerful, can ensure its security by itself. We therefore remain convinced that international cooperation remains a core tool of international security. The big question we all face today is what role we wish to give the BTWC in addressing this sense of threat and vulnerability.

3. The current BTWC work programme is an effort to maintain the multilateral approach to security, and to safeguard the process of the Review Conferences in particular. One cannot fail to note a certain paradox: this goal is to be achieved by focussing on national measures. However, the current process also underscores the importance of national implementation measures in strengthening the global treaty regime. National responsibility has been a greatly neglected area of the BTWC regime. This linkage between the national and global levels also implies that whatever national measures are being studied and evaluated, they need to be considered in the light of the global regime. For example, with regard to national legislation, the following questions come to mind:
   1. Where does the international coordination of national measures come in, especially in the light of the absence of an international coordinating body (such as the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for the Chemical Weapons Convention)?
   2. How does one achieve commonality of the proposed measures? In other words, how does one ensure that the content of the national measures among States Parties more or less cover the same issues?
   3. How does one arrive at a common understanding of terms?
   4. How does one make certain that the laws and other measures are more or less equally stringent?
   5. Will States Parties pay equal attention to the preventive and the penal components of those national measures?
   Today, we can only note the wide range in types of national legislation; if it exists at all.

4. An important additional question is how the current exercise will feed into the debate on the compliance with the BTWC. In other words, how will the national legislative measures be reviewed. At present the BTWC has 5-yearly review conferences. Will this review process now also apply to those national measures?

5. Good ideas may emerge from this process that warrant further consideration and development. However, does the opportunity exist or are States Parties willing to create opportunities to pursue those ideas, or must they remain untouched until they can be considered by the Sixth Review Conference in 2006? It would indeed be a great pity if a momentum were to be lost.

6. The new threats are not a concern just for the rich, industrialized societies. We have recently seen acts of catastrophic terrorism in Africa, Asia and South America. If countries in these areas fail to equip themselves with the necessary tools‹national implementation legislation for the BTWC or pathogen security‹they will inevitably become safe havens for terrorists to plot and launch BW attacks against neighbouring countries or countries farther away. The BWPP therefore strongly believes that each and every State Party to the BTWC has a responsibility to take the current process to strengthen the BTWC seriously and to invest the necessary resources in the timely preparations of the meetings.

7. Despite the importance of the developments and coordination of national measures, the BTWC remains the source of common norms, obligations and responsibilities for all states. Let us not forget that international cooperation creates common instruments to deal with proliferation and armament concerns, and helps to establish common goals against terrorism. The international community simply cannot afford to lose the BTWC.

8. Mr President, Distinguished Representatives, these modest thoughts are intended to help the BTWC regime formation move forward. Please bear in mind that, while the present discussions are technical and complicated, they ultimately serve a moral imperative, namely to remove the scourge of biological warfare from this planet. Thank you very much.

This report was presented at BTWC Expert Group meeting on national measures to implement the prohibitions in the Convention, including penal legislation; and on national mechanisms to establish and maintain the security and oversight of pathogenic microorganisms and toxins, Geneva, Switzerland, 18-29 August 2003