Abstract
In this chapter we shall look first at the shape of the 1972 Convention and its preamble. We shall then subject the operative part of the Convention to a simple analysis, article by article. This analysis treats the Convention as a completed text and seeks to provide comments on each article, as it emerged in its definitive form, sufficient to enable the reader to make sense of later chapters.1
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Notes
The fullest English-language history of the negotiations available to me was the ‘research study … not an official statement of policy’ by Robert W. Lambert and Jean E. Mayer, International Negotiations on the Biological-Weapons and Toxin Convention (Washington, D.C.: US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Publication 78, mimeo, May 1975). Also useful are the summaries of the negotiating history compiled by the UN Secretariat. The period up to December 1969 is covered in Part VI of The United Nations and Disarmament 1945–1970 (New York: United Nations, 1970) pp. 349–73; from January 1970 onwards in Chapter 9 of The United Nations and Disarmament 1970–1975 (New York: United Nations, 1976) p. 141 ff.
By adding a late postscript to cover developments in 1971, SIPRI encompasses the whole negotiating history in Jozef Goldblat’s Volume Four: CB Disarmament Negotiations 1920–1970 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell; New York: Humanities Press, 1971) pp. 253–347, of the six-volume SIPRI study The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare.
Analyses which concentrate on the significance of the definitive text, article by article, rather than on the minutiae of the negotiating history, include notably Georges Fischer, ‘Chronique du Désarmement: la Convention sur l’interdiction de la mise au point, de la fabrication et du stockage des armes bactériologiques (biologiques) ou à toxines et sur leur destruction’, Annuaire Français de Droit International, vol. 17 (1971) 85–130;
Jozef Goldblat, ‘Essential Provisions of the Biological Disarmament Convention’, SIPRI Yearbook of World Armaments and Disarmament 1972 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell; New York: Humanities Press; London: Paul Elek, 1972) pp. 502–12;
and, I understand, the 252-page monograph by Wolf-Dieter Kischlat, Das Übereinkommen über das Verbot der Entwicklung Herstellung und Lagerung bakteriologischer (biologischer) Waffen und von Toxin-Waffen sowie über die Vernichtung solcher Waffen (Frankfurt: Haag und Herchen Verlag, 1976).
Nicholas A. Sims, ‘Consultative Committees as “Appropriate International Procedures” in Disarmament-related Treaties’, Transnational Perspectives (Geneva), IV.1–2 (1978) 15–19.
Nicholas Sims, ‘Biological Disarmament: Britain’s New Posture’, New Scientist, 52: 18–20 (2 December 1971).
Jozef Goldblat, ‘Significance of the Biological Disarmament Convention’, SIPRI Yearbook of World Armaments and Disarmament 1972 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell; New York: Humanities Press; London: Paul Elek, 1972) pp. 512, 513.
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© 1988 Nicholas A. Sims
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Sims, N.A. (1988). The 1972 Convention: Contents. In: The Diplomacy of Biological Disarmament. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08733-4_2
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