Confidence in disarmament: some insights from the treaties banning biological and chemical weapons
Confidence in disarmament: some insights from the treaties banning biological and chemical weapons
(Video presentation, delivered in French on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Initiatives pour le désarmement nucléaire (IDN).)
Hello everyone!
I thank the organisers for inviting me to participate in this symposium to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the IDN. Congratulations!
As you listen to my pre-recorded presentation, I am travelling from The Hague, where I attended the annual meeting of the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), to Geneva, where I will participate in two and a half weeks of meetings of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC).
It is precisely on the issue of transparency and confidence-building measures (CBMs) in these two conventions that I will share some thoughts with you.
Both the BTWC and the CWC are disarmament treaties, meaning that no party to either convention may possess any of the banned weapons. Next year, the BTWC will celebrate its 50th anniversary; the CWC has already been in force for 27 years.
Although both are disarmament treaties, the differences between the two could not be greater. The CWC is about 180 pages long, while the BTWC is only five. The reason is simple: the former has an extensive verification system, while the latter does not. For this reason, France initially refused to sign the BTWC.
Over the years, state parties have developed CBMs to generate more transparency regarding certain types of past and current activities and facilities. However, the completed forms are unilateral declarations affirming the country’s full compliance with the treaty. But, their accuracy is not independently verified. And there is no mechanism, other than consultations, to address inconsistencies or anomalies, given that very few countries have the resources to analyse CBM submissions. Moreover, there are no legal sanctions for failure to submit the forms.
In this sense, the CWC is perhaps better equipped with its international organisation. Since July 2023, all declared chemical weapons have been destroyed under international supervision, and there is a system of routine industrial inspections that works quite well.
Despite these differences, both conventions face similar challenges. And I am not talking here about rapid advances in science and technology, industrial production processes, artificial intelligence, etc. No, I am talking about disinformation and hybrid strategies aimed at undermining international trust in treaties and international institutions by using treaty provisions and procedural rules to sow doubt and undermine scientifically established facts. English names this process as ‘lawfare’.
The last few days have been the worst in my memory in terms of vile disinformation. They include Syria’s claims that it has NEVER used chemical weapons, that the West is funding fundamentalist Islamic terrorists in Syria, that the UK is training up to 100,000 terrorists, and that the West and the UK are supplying chemical weapons or their components to these terrorists for use against Syria, etc.
I am not even mentioning Russia’s so-called ‘evidence’ that the same West is supplying chemical weapons to Ukraine to use against it. Or that EU sanctions are stopping Russia from exporting manure to Africa. (In its right of reply, the EU stated that its sanctions exclude manure and food.)
But the most vile accusations are against the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for carrying out its mandates to investigate allegations of chemical weapons use and identify perpetrators per the Verification Annex, Part XI of the CWC. They literally undermine the authority of the organisation and the norm it protects.
I could go on. Let me take you back two years for another egregious example.
Just after Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, it began a massive disinformation campaign regarding research in Ukrainian biological laboratories. It accused Kyiv of developing biological weapons with the full support and collaboration of the United States and EU members. Moscow took its case to the UN Security Council several times. In the summer of 2022, it triggered the rarely used procedure foreseen in the BTWC of a formal consultative meeting. (See: The BTWC Confronting False Allegations And Disinformation.)
Having failed to achieve the desired result, Moscow triggered Article VI of the BTWC in October 2022, which was unprecedented, by once again bringing its accusations to the UN Security Council. Here, the ten non-permanent members blocked the manoeuver by abstaining collectively. As a result, there was no quorum, which deprived Russia of the opportunity to denounce the vetoes of France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
My point is that while we aspire to have the best verification tools to have confidence in compliance with disarmament and arms control treaties, the potential for exploiting the provisions, procedures and institutions of the treaties through lawfare to spread disinformation and undermine confidence in the functioning of these treaties is a current and challenging battle to fight.
We must also understand that these activities are taking place in a much broader context of hybrid warfare and operations that seek to undermine our trust in our institutions and our civil society so that we start disbelieving everything and everyone.
We must be vigilant and constantly verify the information we receive. We must strive – again and again – to find the sources of the information to which we are exposed. And we must act to counter the disinformation and make the results of our investigations public.
This engagement is the confidence-building measure that each of us must work on every day if we are to preserve the norms against the weapons we want to see banned today and forevermore.
Thank you for your attention, and I wish you a happy birthday filled with optimism for the future.
