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Switzerland Biological and Toxin Weapons

Switzerland is a state party to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC). Biological weapons are any infectious agent such as a bacteria or virus when used intentionally to inflict harm upon others. This definition is often expanded to include biologically-derived toxins and poisons. There are no indications of Switzerland having ever had a biological weapons program.

National measures account for and secure transport of particularly dangerous pathogens or activities involving humans, plants or animals where infection may pose a risk. Most of the European countries have applicable regulation concerning transport of dangerous goods. Some countries have also implemented Law on transportation of hazardous goods (e.g., Switzerland).

Under a comprehensive civil defense program begun in 1963 to defend against fallout from chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, every Swiss household is required to build and stock its own shelter. Public ones can be under schools, squares and sport stadiums or in parking garages.

The German military was the first to rely on biology to create a new form of warfare. During World War I, the German general staff mounted a substantial effort to use biological agents against the Allies, targeting mostly horses and livestock. The French reciprocated, but on a much smaller scale. France dabbled in BW during the Great War - the French reportedly infected horses in Switzerland that were being shipped to Germany with Burkholderia mallei and may have provided unidentified pathogens to prisoners of war inside Germany to employ in sabotage operations.

Reports surfaced in the spring of 1993 that Iran had succeeded in obtaining advanced biological weapons technology in Switzerland. In 2001 the Swiss bank Banca del Gottardo in Lugano, handled one or more sales from Biopreparat, a known Russian biological weapons producer, to Interplastica, a Swiss company with links to several radical Islamic groups, icnluding the Kosovo Liberation Army. Nothing seems to have come of these reports.

The 1972 Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention has no provision for verifying whether its 155 member states are abiding by the treaty. Public health experts say the most dangerous threats include lethal diseases such as smallpox, botulism, tularemia and anthrax, which killed five people when it was sent through the mail in the United States in 2001, and viruses such as Ebola. The review conference in 2001 collapsed amid disagreement over how to enforce the ban on biological weapons.

Between the review conferences, which take place every five years, there are annual meetings of experts and states-parties. Besides the fact that some states, particularly in the Middle East, have sidestepped the convention, one of the biggest challenges is the rapid development of biological sciences, posing new risks with respect to the abuse of scientific knowledge and modern technologies.

In November 2006 Switzerland joined other states in calling for the introduction of legally binding measures to enforce a global ban on biological weapons. The appeal came on the opening day of an international conference in Geneva to review the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. Addressing the meeting, Swiss ambassador Jürg Streuli said the time had come for nations to strengthen the treaty to take account of present and future threats. "This convention is by far the best framework in which to coordinate our efforts to confront the deliberate biological threat, whether this threat originates from a state or not," he said.

"[Switzerland] remains convinced that the drafting of an additional, legally binding protocol for the verification of the provisions of the convention should remain the goal of the conference," said Streuli. Switzerland has drafted a working document designed to improve and strengthen confidence-building measures regarding verification mechanisms.

The convention, which bans the development and stockpiling of germ-based weapons, has never had serious enforcement measures because the threat of biological warfare was believed to be minimal when it was drafted during the Cold War. Efforts to strengthen the treaty gathered pace after concerns that Iraq would use biological weapons during the Gulf War.

But talks were suspended in 2001 after the United States ended attempts to negotiate enforcement procedures, saying such a program would give away defence secrets.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said biological weapons posed a greater threat today owing to advances in science and technology. Annan, who was on his last visit to Switzerland as UN chief, warned of the risks posed by biotechnology during a speech on Saturday in the eastern city of St Gallen where he received the Max Schmidheiny Freedom Prize.

Speaking in Geneva, he urged countries to build on progress made over the past five years and to "take further steps to ensure that the convention will continue to serve as an effective barrier against biological weapons".

Annan said the 31-year-old convention, with its emphasis on preventing states from developing biological weaponry, could not provide total protection on its own. Terrorism and crime at the non-state and individual level also had to be addressed. He repeated a call for a new international forum bringing together governments, scientists, representatives of industry and the general public to develop a new strategy for facing up to the menace. "The horror of biological weapons is shared by all," he said, urging the 155 states party to the treaty to overcome their differences and take further action over the three-week session.

The International Committee of the Red Cross also said that additional measures should be taken to exclude completely the possibility of biological agents and toxins being used as weapons.

In 2014, Switzerland assumed – in the person of Urs Schmid, its Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva – the chairmanship of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). Schmid assumed responsibility for a period of one year for one of the most important disarmament conventions governing weapons of mass destruction. In this capacity he will chair one meeting of experts and one meeting of states parties in Geneva in 2014.

At the Review Conference in November 2016, Switzerland spoke up in favor of giving the Meeting of States Parties the power to take decisions in clearly defined areas and of setting up working groups with a focus on specific topics. Since 2013, Switzerland has taken the lead in advocating for the establishment of a body of experts to systematically address scientific and technological developments and their consequences for the BWC («Science & Technology Review»).

However, the Review Conference was held in a very difficult climate. Diverging views among the main actors made it impossible to reach consensus on the core issue of revitalising the intersessional process, and other concerns. As of 2017, the process consists of nothing more than an annual meeting of states parties mandated to renew discussions on this issue.