CNS Reports

Verifying Compliance to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention

Raymond A. Zilinskas
Senior Scientist in Residence

The major international treaty seeking to control biological warfare (BW) is the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC). The BWC prohibits State Parties (nations that have ratified the treaty) from developing, producing, and testing biological and toxin weapons. Although the treaty sets a high standard of international conduct, it is presently of limited practical effectiveness because it lacks provisions for verification. As the two-headed specter of BW and bioterrorism has become more threatening to our society, the treaty’s lack of verification protocols has generated doubts among security experts about its usefulness. Clandestine BW-related research, development, and production may be performed in facilities that from the outside appear ordinary and unremarkable. Other nations intent on acquiring illicit BW programs will have learned from Iraqi mistakes. Instead of placing their BW facilities on military sites, they may convert existing civilian facilities or secretly construct new dedicated BW complexes within camouflaging shells or underground.

In the most ambitious effort to strengthen the BWC since its ratification, the international arms control community has been working since 1994 to develop a protocol formally establishing a compliance regime, with appropriate enforcement measures included. While it is too early to discern in detail the future treaty’s contents, the rolling text strongly indicates that a compliance regime will indeed be established, and that an enforcement agency, hereafter called the Organization for the Prevention of Biological Warfare (OPBW), will be empowered to conduct investigations of alleged violations of the BWC.

At the 1991 BWC review conference, the Ad Hoc Group of Government Experts to Identify and Examine Verification Measures from a Scientific and Technical Standpoint (VEREX) was created to develop verification measures that might serve as a foundation for the compliance regime. VEREX reported on the advantages of twenty-one verification measures. Below are listed five of the verification measures that will in some combination likely be integrated into OPBW operations.

  • Declarations, the periodic reports prepared by governments disclosing information of relevance to the BWC. A principal starting point for reviewing a nation’s activities relevant to BW compliance.

  • Interviewing facility personnel. If conducted skillfully, may verify peaceful intent of the inspected facility’s work program or reveal discrepancies that might be clues to clandestine BW-related activities.

  • Visual Inspection (On-Site) are conducted by inspectors to determine staffing patterns and institutional configuration – including instrumentation, equipment, supplies, security, safety measures, animal facilities, containment, and waste disposal. However, as all BW equipment is dual-use and routine on-site visual inspections are announced in advance it will be difficult to find incontrovertible evidence of malfeasance. Nevertheless, inspection teams should be able to discern whether facility characteristics match its declared R&D or production program.

  • Identification of ‘Key’ Equipment (On-Site) that is essential for BW development, testing, and manufacture. Even though all such equipment has dual-use capabilities, it may serve as a marker in cases where concerns exist. The pieces of key equipment are those named in the "Control List of Dual-Use Biological Equipment" developed by the Australia Group. The Control List includes large fermenters, centrifugal separators, cross-flow filtration apparatus, freeze-dryers, aerosol inhalation chambers, microencapsulation equipment, and special equipment used in Bio-Level 3 and 4 facilities as well as the facilities themselves.

  • Sampling and Identification (On-Site) by inspectors collecting samples from sources, including equipment used for R&D, manufacture, and storage; dust within buildings; soil from outside buildings; the facility’s waste stream; air filters; and animals and plants used in R&D and product testing. On-site sampling is one of the most contentious issues facing the Ad Hoc Group in developing the protocol. In particular, there is the possibility that on-site sampling (and other on-site measures) might compromise confidential business information and national security information.

In addition to the VEREX measures, epidemiological surveillance of disease outbreaks, not targeted to specific suspect facilities, may be of significant value to determining the etiology of suspicious or unusual disease outbreaks. Despite the difficulties inherent to performing epidemiological surveillance, the OPBW’s effectiveness would be severely compromised if it did not possess the capability to adequately investigate unusual disease outbreaks anywhere in the world. Investigations would be able to establish, either directly or indirectly, whether a natural-occurring agent or a BW agent is implicated.

If the OPBW were unable to perform on-site inspections, annual declarations would only have minor value for verification purposes. By subjecting a suspect facility to a direct examination, information of sufficient quality and quantity can be collected to assess the objectives of the inspected entity’s work program. To be effective, some on-site measures are intrusive to some extent. This has led to concerns over protecting national security and intellectual property rights in the countries or facilities subject to inspection. Specifically, two on-site measures – visual inspection and sampling – provide routes whereby legitimately confidential information could reach outsiders. The problem is that these are also the most effective compliance measures – their employment by skilled inspectors would generate significant information about an inspected facility’s projects, plans, investors, etc. To help ensure that the proprietary concerns of industry are addressed, BWC State Parties should insist on rigorous screening of prospective on-site inspectors, to weed out those with undesirable traits. After inspectors have been thoroughly vetted, a condition of their employment should be the signing of a nondisclosure agreement. A legal mechanism must be put in place to prosecute and punish individuals who violate this agreement.

It is likely that most violations of the BWC will be exceedingly difficult to detect directly, rather, they will have to be inferred from the observation or detection of several suspicious indicators that when taken together, strongly suggest a violation. A mechanism has to be constructed by the international community that can meet the technical challenge, of being able to detect signals indicative of illicit activity, analyze them, and interpret them for what they are.

The future protocol to the BWC would provide an obligation on its State Parties to actively participate in efforts to strengthen the BWC. If most of the nations that belong to the BWC ratify the protocol and if the OPBW is provided with the scientific and technical resources it needs to accomplish its mission, including the power to thoroughly investigate suspicious events, then an acceptable level of verification would be achieved for the BWC.

Excerpted from his article in Critical Reviews in Microbiology, Special Issue: Biological Weapons, Vol. 24, Issue 3, 1998. For further information, please call Dr. Raymond Zilinskas at 202-478-3446


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