In Lieu of Paper Tigers: An analysis on the Biological Weapons Convention’s Negotiations and Suggestions of the Future
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Date
2016-10-27
Authors
Arsenault, Katherine
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
The Biological Weapons Convention has been criticized for its lack of measures that prevent biological and toxin weapons from being used on civilians around the globe. The Biological Weapons Convention is the main international disarmament treaty that attempts to prohibit the development, production, and stockpiling of bacteriological and toxin weapons. In the 1990’s, the State Parties of this treaty entered into negotiations in an attempt to create mandates that would further prevent biological warfare, by focusing on facets of this treaty that are weak (Littlewood, 2012). From 1994 to 2001, the Ad Hoc Group for the Biological Weapons Convention negotiated these measures. Though there were multiple areas of the negotiation process that amplified the failure, one measure ended the Biological Weapons Convention’s negotiations completely in 2001—the verification protocol. This thesis argues for the removal of the verification protocol from the negotiation table in lieu of stalemate and paper tigers.