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BWC: Survey Finds Many Nations Lacking Required Treaty Legislation By David Ruppe The London-based group, the Verification Research, Training and Information Center (VERTIC), this week released a database of national implementation legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. The group will also release the information to a gathering of official technical experts meeting next week in Geneva to discuss the treaty. The compilation shows that 31 of the 150 treaty parties, only 21 percent, responded to a VERTIC survey started one year ago. The questionnaire asked for information about the enforcement measures each nation has adopted to ensure its compliance with the treaty that bans biological weapons development, production or possession. The number and content of the responses suggest that many countries, mainly those that are less developed, have not passed legislation to ensure that the treaty is fully enforced on their territories, VERTIC Legal Researcher Angela Woodward said. The nonresponse level was “very high in Africa, quite high in the Americas, and Asia, so our fairly educated guess from similar efforts under other treaties is that a lot of states just won’t have appropriate measures in place, unfortunately,” she said. Woodward said, though, that many countries may have some laws in place but failed to respond to the survey because of translation issues, neglect or a lack of an office to handle such requests. Copies of the VERTIC questionnaire were provided in English, Spanish and French, and a new Arabic version has been produced, she said. The survey uses data from open sources as well, to provide information on implementing legislation for more than 90 countries, she said. The United States, in particular, has urged other governments to pass such legislation, and an official last year cited comparable statistics for the Chemical Weapons Convention to urge nations to pass implementing legislation for that treaty. “It’s certainly a very useful thing for them to be doing … because there has not been a comprehensive compilation of the implementing measures,” said a U.S. official praising VERTIC’s effort. Respondents Woodward said the majority of states that responded to the survey were Western industrialized nations, but not exclusively. Australia, Canada, China, Finland, Russia, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States have responded, while France and New Zealand have not. Responses also were received from Belize, Colombia, Lithuania, Paraguay, Peru and Saint Kitts and Nevis. She singled out Saint Kitts and Nevis for producing short, but excellent legislation containing strong law enforcement powers that smaller states might model and for adopting the legislation within three months of the treaty entering into force. “They were really on the ball,” she said. Woodward said some countries lacking implementing measures might have concluded that they are not needed because the countries lack a pharmaceutical sector or have never had a biological weapons program. “That argument isn’t sufficient,” she said, adding that terrorists could choose countries without treaty enforcement powers as safe havens for illicit activities. She noted that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1373, passed in late September 2001, requires U.N. member states to take measures to prevent terrorists and their supporters from acting on their territories. Woodward said she hopes the VERTIC database will help motivate countries to act. “The main purpose of our project was to try to raise awareness of the obligation to adopt legislation,” she said. “We’re hoping at [next week’s] meeting states will consider making their legislation more transparent, increase a willingness to cooperate and share experience … and actually provide assistance to states that request it,” she said.
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