By Wednesday, November 29, four potential recurring topics for inter-sessional meetings were being discussed: universality, national implementation (both of these will likely be the focus of “action plans”), scientific and technological developments, and coordination with other international bodies.  In addition, eleven topics for single annual meetings were on the table for discussion:

1 Ways and means to enhance national implementation: including enforcement of national legislation and strengthening of national institutions, and cooperation between courts, police and customs

2 Regional and sub-regional cooperation on BWC implementation

3 National, regional and international measures to improve biosafety and biosecurity, including laboratory safety and security of pathogens and toxins

4 Education, awareness-raising, scientific oversight and codes of conduct

5 Advances in science and technology relevant to the Convention, including prevention of misuse of such advances for illicit or hostile purposes as prohibited by the Convention

6 Facilitation of, and removal of restrictions or limitations on, scientific and technological cooperation and exchange, including in the field of biotechnology, for peaceful purposes in pursuance of Article X

7 Disease surveillance, including international cooperation in improving primary healthcare systems and improving detection and diagnostic capabilities

8 Preparedness and response in the case of alleged use of biological or toxin weapons, whether by state or non-state actors, including provision of assistance and coordination with relevant organizations, in accordance with Article VII

9 Confidence-building measures, including provision of assistance to States Parties on request

10 Terms and definitions relevant to the Convention

11 Bioterrorism and non-state actors

With only four inter-sessional meetings, and with action plans on universality and national implementation to be re-visited every year, it is clear that this list needs to be narrowed down.  That’s where there is a lot of tension and debate.

We are now hearing that there is a general consensus in favor of the first four topics, and that topic 11 has been discarded (it is, however, a cross-cutting topic that should naturally come up during meetings on the other topics).  However, topic 4 has been dramatically weakened, so that it now reads “oversight to prevent use of research and advances in science and technology for purposes prohibited by the Convention through education, awareness-raising and adoption of codes of conduct.”  In my opinion, real scientific oversight requires more than this.

There is as yet apparently little consensus on the rest of the topics (5 – 10).  For instance, Iran has reportedly raised objections to topic 8, while Russia is pushing topic 10, which nobody else wants. I’ll be blunt: both Iran and Russia are wrong.  Topic 8 could actually help the States Parties move forward collectively.  Meanwhile, Russia’s goal on topic 10 appears to be to narrow the scope of the prohibitions in the BWC.  The U.S. and other States Parties are absolutely right to reject this.

In contrast, the U.S. is not taking a positive position on topic 9 – it does not want CBMs to be a topic of either an inter-sessional meeting or a work plan.  Here the U.S. and Russia are apparently allies (with some other countries likely hiding behind the U.S. position). Since discussion of CBMs could actually begin to get at some of the difficult issues (such as compliance of robust and secretive biodefense programs with the BWC) that States Parties have been avoiding, this is not a surprise.  But by blocking significant progress on this issue, the U.S. and Russia are harming BW non-proliferation efforts.

Meanwhile, other difficult but important issues don’t even seem to be up for discussion. For instance, there is no mention of mechanisms to investigate allegations of use or of non-compliance, in spite of the U.S. working paper on “confronting non-compliance” that was issued last week. And topic 5 has now reportedly been weakened by the removal of any reference to “prevention of misuse,” thereby threatening to yield a largely academic discussion. With some of the proposed single topics already fitting into the action plans and recurring topics, room could be made to address more challenging issues.  One could understand the reluctance to deal with hard issues if the inter-sessional meetings were going to be empowered to take decisions, but the U.S. apparently continues to oppose such a step even for the less ambitious topics it is supporting.  It is hard to see how this represents an advance over the 2003 – 2005 inter-sessional process.

In the end, I am left wondering whether the inter-sessional process being discussed can succeed in making the BWC what David Fidler calls a much needed “center of gravity in the new [unstructured] world of biosecurity governance,” by beginning to integrate the BWC with the plethora of activities occurring outside of it. It is not clear, for instance, that the program being discussed will subject the full range of activities to regular scrutiny by states, intergovernmental organizations and non-state actors, or that it can succeed in developing “BWC-based and BWC-catalyzed contributions” to the biosecurity governance challenges these actors face.  Paying serious attention to national implementation will certainly help, but given the change in topic 4, the intense debate over Article X, and the avoidance of other serious challenges to biosecurity governance as discussed above, it will take hard work to set the next inter-sessional process on the right track.