Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
right to retaliate. As the Convention purports to strengthen the Geneva
Protocol, there should be an absolute and universal prohibition of the use
of the weapons in question.” 1
Other states, parties to both the Geneva Protocol and the BWC, still
need to act to bring themselves into line with the Irish declaration of 7
February 1972. Finally, clarification is needed of the legal position of all
states, whether parties to the Geneva Protocol or not, preferably through
an authoritative statement of the law as prohibiting any use of BW by any
state in any circumstances whatever.
Constraints on Possession
Constraints on possession of BW were nonexistent for most states until
almost 50 years into the life of the Geneva Protocol.
For many years after 1925, negotiations, including a proposed prohibi-
tion on possession of BW, took place only in the context of unsuccess-
fully promoted plans for general and complete disarmament, and then
only sporadically. Possession remained generally unconstrained until 26
March 1975, when the BWC entered into force for its 46 original States
Parties (joined subsequently by 108 others). Only a small number—7 at
most—of “former enemy states” and their associates were already pro-
hibited from possessing, inter alia, BW by individual peace treaties or
other postwar settlements negotiated between 1947 and 1955 with the
victors of World War II. For the great majority of states, with no treaty ob-
ligation to observe and no norm of customary international law against
the possession of BW equivalent in legal authority to the norm against
their use, it remained lawful to possess them, if they chose to, until at
least 1975.
In the event, most states chose not to avail themselves of this possibil-
ity. The few states that did were faced from 1975 with a treaty obligation
to abandon possession of BW which, even if they did not themselves ac-
cept it, attracted so many other adherents that a customary norm against
possession might emerge on the evidence of state practice and eventually
opinio juris.
Since its entry into force in 1975, the BWC has been the principal legal
constraint on possession.
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