CBM Project

The dual-use-character (ability to be used for civil as well as militariy purpuses)  of most activities in biotechnology makes transparency measures about biological activities performed in a given country of upmost importance in order to increase confidence in the peaceful nature of activities. Excessive secrecy surrounding military and civilian activities in the biological field on the other hand, could lead to  mutually reinforced suspicions of non-compliance among the contracting states. Yet, the International Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) remains without a verification-mechanism for compliance by its signatoriessince, ever since  negotiations on an additional verification protocol in 2001 failed. 

A couple of years ago, in 1986,  the contracting states of the BWC had agreed to submit annual confidence-building measures (CBMs) which encouraged them to disclose their biotechnological activities in detail to each other.  Thee CBMs took on the form of data exchange measures and were administered through the BWC Implementation Support Unit (ISU). At the third BWC Review Conference of  1991, the forms for CBMs were extended. Yet, they were not discussed in detail at the Fourth Review Conference in 1996 and no or little progress was achieved on them during the Fifth and Sixth Review Conference in 2001 and 2006 - which means, the CBMs that state parties of the BWC agreed on up to 1991, remain the only transparency enhancing mechanism in the framework of the BWC. This puts them at risk of  becoming outdated as technological progress continues as well as loosing relevance due to continous low participation of the contracting states.

In the absence of a verification regime and in light of the dual-use nature of nearly all activities in modern biotechnology, transparency measures in the context of the BWC remain of central importance. The research post for biological weapons control has closely accompanied the development of the CBMs ever since its inception. It has analyzed the data exchanged in the context of CBMs and provided recommendations on how the CBMs could be designed more purposefully by trying to decide on those information most relevant for exchange and increasing participation.

 Some of this work can be found in the annual CBMs readers that are made publicly available.