Why in the News?

United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) celebrated 50^th anniversary Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).

About Biological Weapons Convention (BWC)

• Formally known as "The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction".

• Genesis: Negotiated in Geneva, Switzerland within the Eighteen Nation Committee on Disarmament (ENDC) and Conference of the Committee on Disarmament (CCD) from 1969 until 1971.
  • Opened for signature in 1972 and entered into force in 1975.
• Membership: Almost universal membership with 188 States Parties (India signed and ratified in 1974) and 4 Signatory States (Egypt, Haiti, Somalia, Syrian Arab Republic).
  • States Parties meet approximately every 5 years to review its operation. 
  • States Parties to BWC have strived to ensure that Convention remains relevant and effective, despite the changes in science and technology, politics and security since it entered into force.
• Key facts about the BWC
  • 1^st multilateral disarmament treaty banning an entire category of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
  • Effectively prohibits the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use of biological and toxin weapons.
    • Supplements the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which had prohibited only the use of biological weapons.
  • Implementation Support Unit (ISU) to provide administrative support to meetings agreed by Review Conference, comprehensive implementation, universalization of the Convention.
• 5 States- Israel, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea and Kiribati have neither signed nor acceded to the Convention.

Challenges related to BWC

• Lack of a Verification Mechanism:  Unlike other major disarmament treaties, Dual-use nature of bioscience makes it difficult to differentiate between peaceful and offensive applications from an accounting-driven framework.
  • In case of Chemical Weapons Convention, verification is based on framework driven by accounting that involves documentation of facilities, tools, and raw materials of relevance etc.
• Lack of legally enforceable data collecting provision: It contributes to BWC reliance on politically binding confidence-building measure (CBM) submissions. 
  • CBM suffers from low participation (2022 was the first year that over 50% of states parties submitted a CBM).
• Limited Institutional support: Implementation Support Unit (ISU) is understaffed, it was only at Ninth Review Conference that ISU increased its staffing from 3 non- permanent staff to 4, since its inception in 2006.
• Insufficient National Implementation: For e.g., India has a National Authority for Chemical Weapons Convention (NACWC) but lacks a similarly centralized body for the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).

Way forward

• Implement Modular-Incremental Approach for Verification: This approach focuses on integrating various policy proposals and scientific tools to create a more robust verification regime. 
• Expand Permanent Institutional Support:  Appoint a rotating expert verification group under the UN Secretary-General, comprising disarmament specialists and biotechnology industry experts to oversee BWC compliance.
• Universalize Confidence-Building Measure Submissions: Recent advances in artificial intelligence and natural language processing have the potential to make some CBM submissions easier, such as through the use of data harmonization and text mining.
• Address Non-State Actor Threats: Integrating BWC with UN Security Council Resolution 1540 to prevent non-state actors (terrorist groups) from acquiring, developing, or using biological weapons.