Increasing assurance under the BTWC through biorisk management standards
The final report of the 7th Review Conference of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) held in December 2011 contained a one-line subparagraph whose ambition came to fruition in December 2019. Under Article IV (on national implementation measures), paragraph 13 opened as follows: The Conference notes the value of national implementation measures, as appropriate, in accordance with the constitutional process of each State Party, to: (a) implement voluntary management standards on biosafety and biosecurity; That single line of new language in the final report was the outcome of a preparatory process that had begun in September 2009 and …
From Flanders' entrenched politics
[Updated: 9 March 2014] Next month, on the 22nd, it will be the 99th anniversary of the start of modern chemical warfare. The salient around the Flemish town of Ieper offered the perfect location: its northern edge was the only place along the Western front where German troops did not face the prevailing south-westerly winds that could have blown back the chlorine cloud. Later, of course, shells replaced gas cloud attacks. Shells imply depots, including ones close to the trenches. In Flanders it is not uncommon to still uncover duds—shells that failed to detonate because of malfunction or simply because …