Legal Constraints on Biological Weapons - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 335

free to develop, produce, acquire, retain, and transfer BW. Even the con-
straint on use was far from absolute; but it existed, within limits, while
other BW constraints for the great majority of states did not exist at all.
From 1975 to 2005 a large number of states, rising from 46 to 154, sub-
jected themselves to additional treaty constraints on their freedom to de-
velop, produce, stockpile, acquire, retain, and transfer BW. The question
remains open whether the minority of states, which have stayed outside
all treaty limitations on BW activities by being parties neither to the
Geneva Protocol nor to the BWC, are nonetheless constrained by inter-
national customary law.
The midpoint in this 60-years saga was the entry into force, on 26
March 1975, of the BWC. This multilateral disarmament treaty is not the
only post-1925 source of legal constraints on states in respect of BW, but
it is the central one, and from it has flowed a treaty regime at the heart of
the collective effort to combat the threat of BW. It has been comple-
mented by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) of 1993, in force
since 29 April 1997, in respect of its prohibitions on all types of CW,
including toxins as a category bridging the two Conventions; and by
national measures, including legislation to give domestic legal effect to
the BWC and CWC prohibitions. It may yet be complemented by further
national measures, and prospectively by new international legal instru-
ments, such as a CBW Criminalization Convention, which remain to be
negotiated.
1945-1975: Constraints on Use
The main constraint on use is found in the following excerpt from the
Geneva Protocol of 17 June 1925:
THE UNDERSIGNED PLENIPOTENTIARIES, in the name of their respec-
tive Governments:
Whereas the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous, or other gases,
and of all analogous liquids, materials, or devices, has been justly con-
demned by the general opinion of the civilized world; and
Whereas the prohibition of such use has been declared in Treaties to
which the majority of Powers of the world are Parties; and
To the end that this prohibition shall be universally accepted as a part