Meeting of States Parties to the Biological Weapons Convention.

Caitríona McLeish & James Revill attended the concluding meeting of the Second Intersessional Process of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and the last meeting to be convened prior to the Seventh Review Conference of the BWC in 2011. The meeting was mandated to address the topic of ‘Provision of assistance and coordination with relevant organizations upon request by any State Party in the case of alleged use of biological or toxin weapons, including improving national capabilities for disease surveillance, detection and diagnosis and public health systems’. Several of the statements presented on the day referred to the issue of science and technology and the need to review advances of relevance to the convention, including the UN Secretary General, who stated that: “with the pace of advances in biological science and technology growing ever quicker, there is a pressing need for a structured and regular means of monitoring developments and assessing their implications”. The statement of the UN Secretary General, a procedural report and the additional paragraphs as adopted in the Closing Session of this meeting, are available online through the UN Office in Geneva’s webpage.

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