The 2011 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) Review Conference ended Dec. 22 with participants generally saying they were satisfied with the consensus agreement on a final document but with many expressing some disappointment that the conference failed to adopt significant changes in the treaty regime.

Biological weapons seem to have lost their appeal—as an object of policy concern, that is. From the early 1960s, when nonproliferation emerged as an international security challenge, until the 1990s, the nonproliferation agenda was dominated by nuclear issues. Chemical and biological weapons were deemed a comparatively minor matter, the province of only a small, largely technical community laboring in relative obscurity as far as senior policymakers were concerned. Beginning in the mid-1990s, however, as the product of an unusual combination of developments in Iraq, the Soviet Union, and Japan, chemical and biological weapons began to climb up the global security agenda.

Parties to the Biological Weapons Convention can improve their intersessional process, in part by beginning to address treaty compliance issues.

At the annual meeting of parties to the Biological Weapons Convention, delegates were staking out positions on issues that are likely to figure prominently at this year’s review conference.