International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation

Biological Weapons Project at VERTIC

VERTIC is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation. Its mission is to promote effective and efficient verification as a means of ensuring confidence in the implementation of international agreements and intra-national agreements with international involvement. Along with verification, VERTIC also concerns itself with the negotiation, monitoring and implementation of such agreements and the establishment of confidence-building measures to bolster them.

VERTIC aims to achieve its mission through research, training, dissemination of information, and meetings and interaction with the political, diplomatic, technical, scientific and non-governmental communities.

VERTIC's 'clients' are policy-makers, the media, legislators, academics, students and others needing reliable information on and analysis of verification and monitoring issues.

Biological weapons (BW) are one of the most serious threats to international security. In 1972, the international community outlawed these weapons of mass destruction in the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). The BWC is the first multilateral agreement that bans an entire category of weapons, but it contains no provisions for verification. The international community undertook new efforts to close this gap in the early 1990s after it was discovered that the former Soviet Union had violated the BWC for decades by maintaining a massive secret BW programme, and that Iraq had also had an illicit BW programme.

VERTIC's Biological Weapons project promotes speedy agreement on a strong verification protocol. In order to create political pressure towards an agreement, VERTIC aims to increase public awareness of the importance of effective verification for the BWC as a means of minimising suspicion about the efficacy of the 1972 global ban. VERTIC interacts closely with diplomats and technical experts in Geneva and attempts to assist negotiators and decision-makers by analysing obstacles towards agreement. VERTIC closely consults with a range of other non-governmental organisations and experts and other members of the BW verification community. VERTIC staff members have attended several sessions of the Ad Hoc Group.

For more information, see VERTIC's homepage at www.vertic.org.