Increasing cooperation between security, health officials
in 1975, prohibits the development, production and stockpiling of weaponized agents such as anthrax, smallpox and plague.
Since 2007, the UN’ Geneva office has hosted two annual meetings on the convention, focusing on different topics each year. The 2010 series marks the fourth and final installment of the “intersessional process.”
In each summer session, experts meet to hear and present evaluations related to the chosen topic. During the winter conference, delegates from member nations examine the earlier meeting’s findings and pass along recommendations, or “common understandings,” to the convention’s review conference.
The BWC review conferences, scheduled every five years, examine the pact’s implementation and recommend improvements to the regime. The 2011 summit will be the seventh such meeting.
The annual process had “tangible and intangible results” between the law enforcement and health communities, according to Piers Millet, a member of the convention’s Implementation Support Unit.
He pointed to the “common understandings” as tangible outcomes that show “the range of things that states agree on under the banner of health security.”
On the intangible side, the support unit has heard “anecdotes of countries where health and security communities have met for the first time, traveling all the way to Geneva to do it,” according to Millet, whose unit is composed of three people and housed within the UN Disarmament Affairs Office.
“I’m not suggesting that’s the most efficient model, but at least it’s a benefit at some point.”
He noted a recent presentation by the FBI and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as an example where the two camps “clearly had a shared language and objective.”
Millet also cited the value of the release last year of the Obama administration’s National Strategy for Countering Biological Threats. The strategy, unveiled at the BWC states parties meeting last year, focused on increasing preparedness to reduce the impact of infectious disease outbreaks, whether natural or manmade.
Global Security Newswire writes that the strategy also reaffirmed the U.S. policy set by the Bush administration of not participating in talks to establish a system for monitoring compliance with the four-page treaty. White House officials in 2001 withdrew from nearly seven years of negotiations aimed at creating an inspections protocol, concluding such a system would not increase confidence in the international agreement and prove burdensome to U.S. biodefense efforts and the biotechnology industry.
The ongoing U.S. policy has led some nations to be skeptical of how committed Washington is to BWC implementation.
“There’s a bit
