Deciding on emergency assistance in case of biological weapons use
Today, in the Palais des Nations in Geneva we presented the report on the Tabletop Exercise (TTX) on the Implementation of Article VII of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), which the Fondation pour la recherche stratégique (FRS) and the BTWC Implementation Support Unit (ISU) organised in cooperation with UN Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament (UNREC) organised in Lomé, Togo on 28–29 May 2019.
Being one of the more obscure provisions in the BTWC, Article VII only attracted state party attention over the past ten years or so. In follow-up to the decision of the 7th Review Conference (2011), parties to the convention looked for the first time more closely at the provision during the August 2014 Meeting of Experts (MX). As it happened, the gathering coincided with the expanding Ebola crisis in West Africa. The epidemic gave urgency to the concrete implementation of Article VII. The daily images of victims and fully protected medical staff broadcast around the world left lasting impressions of how a biological attack from another state or terrorist entity might affect societies anywhere.
Operationalising Article VII has proven more complex than anticipated. The provision comprises several clauses that fit ill together upon closer inspection and hence obscure its originally intended goals. In addition, it contains no instructions about how a state party should trigger it or the global community respond after its invocation.
The 8th Review Conference (2016) ended in failure. The only provision that received significant new language was Article VII, which in the final report now comprises 15 paragraphs that list objectives, challenges and possible ways forward. In the current intersessional period (2018-20) a two-day MX entitled ‘Assistance, Response and Preparedness’ is held every year and will hopefully yield new insights and decision proposals for consideration during the 9th Review Conference in 2021.
The TTX at UNREC in May 2019 was the second one run by the FRS. It brought together experts from the Francophone countries in West Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Togo.
Like with the first TTX in November 2016, the exercise in Lomé sought to achieve a better understanding of the elements required to trigger Article VII and the consequences such action may have on the organisation of international assistance. Moreover, the second TTX also aimed to achieve a deeper appreciation of the unique contribution of the BTWC in addition to the expected assistance efforts by international organisations, relief associations and individual countries.
The TTX put into sharper relief certain questions BTWC states parties will have to address even before the first item of assistance is shipped to the disaster area. Discussions in Lomé especially highlighted the relationship between normal assistance in case of a health emergency and the types of assistance that might specifically be delivered under the BTWC.
Report
Jean Pascal Zanders, Ralf Trapp and Elisande Nexon, Report of the Tabletop Exercise (TTX) on the Implementation of Article VII of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) (Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, Paris, August 2019)
Earlier publications
Jean Pascal Zanders, Elisande Nexon and Ralf Trapp, Report of the Tabletop Exercise (TTX) on the Implementation of Article VII of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) (Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique: Paris, July 2017)
Jean Pascal Zanders, The Meaning of ‘Emergency Assistance’: Origins and negotiation of Article VII of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (The Trench and the Fondation pour la recherche stratégique: Ferney-Voltaire and Paris, August 2018)
