Jean Pascal Zanders

#ChemicalWeapons #BiologicalWeapons #GenevaProtocol The 1925 Geneva Protocol: The League of Nations’ Only Arms Control Agreement Historical Notes #6 (July 2025), 107pp. For download: the-trench.org/1925-geneva-pr… The origins of the Geneva Protocol and the history of its negotiation 100 years ago, including an analysis of why Poland insisted on inserting bacteriological weapons in the document. On Wednesday, 17 June 1925, the Conference for the Supervision of the International Traffic in Arms successfully concluded six weeks of negotiations with three agreements. One of them was the Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare. Of the forty-four participating delegations, twenty-six possessed plenipotentiary power to sign the Protocol before the closing of the Conference. Another twelve states affixed their signatures and ratified the document before its general entry into force on 8 February 1928. As of June 2025, 147 states are party to the Geneva Protocol, as the legal instrument is commonly known. Despite being a mere single-page long, the agreement has limited the use of chemical weapons (CW) in armed conflicts and all but prevented the deliberate spread of disease as a method of warfare. Being part of the laws of war, it did not forbid the development, production and possession of chemical and bacteriological (biological) weapons (CBW). Still, it paved the way for the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). In addition, it provides the legal foundation for the UN Secretary-General’s Mechanism to investigate alleged CBW use. The 1998 Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court, uses Protocol language to declare CW use a war crime. (A later amendment added BW use to the list of war crimes but utilised the reference to biological and bacteriological agents in the BTWC.) While today nobody contests the Geneva Protocol’s contribution to the development of the norm against CBW, little is known about the factors that contributed to its emergence and negotiation. Why was the document a protocol and not a treaty? Given the supposed widespread abhorrence against CW after the massive and systematic use of gas during the First World War, why did it take almost seven years for the international community to translate this repugnance into a global ban? Why did the centuries-old customary prohibition of poison use, codified for the first time at the 1899 Hague Convention and restated at the 1907 Hague Convention, no longer suffice? How did the negotiators, seemingly out of nowhere, decide to include disease as a method of warfare in the Protocol? This issue of Historical Studies aims to answer these and many other questions.

#BiologicalWeapons #ArtificialIntelligence #Threat (or not) #Governance Reasons to be pessimistic (and optimistic) on the future of biosecurity owlposting.com/p/reasons-to-b… [...] Yet, I still believe it is still hard to actually turn all this into something evil. And no, I do not think that gesturing towards ‘automated labs’ is a good counter argument. Doing things in the world of atoms is difficult. Especially here. Why? Didn’t I just write a month back about how cloud labs are the final end-state of lab automation plays, so can’t they be hacked into doing something ulterior? Man, maybe. But you should consider the fact that these cloud labs are, at the moment, barely functional enough to do the things their paying customers want them to do, let alone serve as unwitting accomplices in a bioterror plot. Yes, they will improve, but their improvement is on a very jagged frontier. Liquid handler automation is going splendid. Liter-scale creation, purification, and aerosolization of BSL-4 substances automation is not going so splendidly. Also, even in the case where automation suddenly rapidly accelerates, it is almost certainly economically not viable for these labs to care about servicing the likely small consumer market of ‘large-scale non-therapeutic virus creation’. [...]

#BiologicalWeapons #1972BWC #Disarmament Behavioral arms control in the century of biology tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10… [ #OpenSource - PDF available]

#BiologicalWeapons #1972BWC #CBMs Gaps in transparency: understanding limited participation in confidence-building measures under the Biological Weapons Convention tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10… [ #OpenSource - PDF available]

#Palaeoarchaeology #Neanderthal #Medicine Neanderthals may have used birch tar for its anti-bacterial properties, experiments suggest phys.org/news/2026-03-n… [...] Neanderthals also employed a variety of medical practices. To investigate the medicinal potential of birch tar, Siemssen and colleagues extracted tar from modern birch tree bark, specifically targeting species known from Neanderthal sites. They used multiple extraction methods, including distillation of tar in a clay pit and condensation of tar against a stone surface, both of which would have been methods available to Neanderthals. When exposed to different strains of bacteria, all of the tar samples were found to be effective at hindering the growth of Staphylococcus bacteria known to cause wound infections. These experiments not only support the efficacy of Indigenous medicinal practices, but also reinforce the possibility that Neanderthals used birch tar to treat wounds. The authors note that there are other potential uses of birch tar, such as insect repellent, as well as other plants to which Neanderthals had access. Further exploration of the multiple potential uses of these natural ingredients will enable a more thorough understanding of Neanderthal culture. The authors add, "We found that the birch tar produced by Neanderthals and early humans had antibacterial properties. This has important implications for how Neanderthals may have mitigated disease burden during the last Ice Ages, and adds to a growing set of evidence on health care in these early human communities." [...]

#ChemicalWeapons #Syria #Disarmament #OPCW #Turkey Türkiye joins task force to destroy Assad regime's chemical weapons in Syria en.yenisafak.com/world/turkiye-… [...] In addition to Türkiye and Syria, task force members include Qatar, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada and the OPCW Technical Secretariat. A ceremony marking the official launch was held Wednesday in New York, with Türkiye represented by its Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Ahmet Yildiz. The diverse membership reflects broad international concern about securing and eliminating remaining chemical threats. Member countries are expected to provide training, equipment and technical support for safe reconnaissance, containment, storage and destruction of chemical weapons and residues. [...]

#ChemicalWeapons #Syria #Disarmament #OPCW #Turkey Türkiye to help Syria eliminate Assad regime’s chemical weapons dailysabah.com/politics/turki… [...] Türkiye has also been carrying out humanitarian demining activities in various parts of Syria, contributing to the disposal of unexploded ordnance as well as providing active political, technical and logistical support within the framework of the task force and OPCW-led international efforts. In this context, Türkiye hosted a workshop in Ankara on Feb. 16-17 with the participation of experts from task force member countries and the OPCW. The workshop assessed in detail the operational, technical and institutional capacity gaps in eliminating remnants of the former Assad regime's chemical weapons program and helped structure support packages to be provided to Syria.

#ChemicalWeapons #Syria #Disarmament #OPCW Syria unveils plan to eliminate Assad's chemical weapons reuters.com/world/americas… [...] An international taskforce backed by the United States, ⁠Germany, Britain, Canada and France, among others, will track down all remaining elements of the program and destroy ​them under the supervision of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Syria's ambassador to the United ​Nations, Ibrahim Olabi, said in an interview. As many as 100 sites in Syria need to be inspected to determine what toxic munitions remain and how they should be destroyed, OPCW experts have said. It will require a time-consuming and costly operation to prevent the ​proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in a region fraught with conflict and political turmoil. The expanding U.S.-Israeli war ​on Iran and broader regional security concerns will make the timing of the mission uncertain, but all the more necessary ‌to prevent ⁠future use, officials said. [...]

#UnitedNations #CivilSociety #ECOSOC A UN Committee Election Could Worsen Civil Society Access to the World Body @pass_blue passblue.com/2026/03/18/a-u… Far from headlines, the United Nations Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations has the power of picking which civil society voices get heard at the organization. The election of the committee’s newest 19 members is slated to occur on April 8. As a subsidiary body of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the committee decides which nongovernmental groups are given the coveted consultative status that enables their participation in several UN entities and processes. The committee receives hundreds of applications a year to be considered at two annual sessions, usually in January and May. The NGO Committee consists of 19 countries distributed across the UN’s five regional blocs, elected to four-year terms. Its membership directly affects the ability of organizations to access the UN system. [...] Given the immense impact that members of this small committee have on civil society’s access to the UN, we hope governments committed to enabling NGO participation throw their hat in the ring quickly. Civil society has long sought to reform this dysfunctional, gridlocked and politicized body. The committee has a history of capriciously deferring nongovernmental organization applications. At its last session, in late January, the committee considered 618 applications, of which 381 were deferred from previous sessions, a backlog that has accumulated as countries have added more hoops for applicant NGOs to jump through. [...]

#ChemicalWeapons #AcidAttack #Indonesia #HumanRights Indonesia detains four soldiers over acid attack on activist bbc.co.uk/news/articles/… Indonesian authorities have detained four soldiers for their alleged role in an acid attack on an activist who criticised the military's influence in government, officials said. Andrie Yunus from KontraS, a prominent rights group that investigates forced disappearances, suffered burns to more than 20% of his body after two men on a scooter splashed him with acid last week. [...]

#Covid19 #Pandemic #USA #Statistics #ArtificialIntelligence Applying machine learning to identify unrecognized COVID-19 deaths recorded as other causes of death in the United States science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… [ #OpenSource - PDF available] Abstract The actual number of US deaths caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection has been investigated and debated since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we use machine learning trained on US death certificates from March 2020 to December 2021 to predict 155,536 (95% uncertainty interval: 150,062 to 161,112) unrecognized COVID-19 deaths. This indicates that 19% more COVID-19 deaths occurred in the US than officially reported. Predicted unrecognized COVID-19 deaths occurred disproportionately among decedents with less than a high school education; decedents identified as Hispanic, American Indian, Alaska Native, Asian, and/or Black; counties with lower household incomes and worse preexisting health; and counties in the South. These findings suggest that the US death investigation system undercounted COVID-19 deaths unevenly, hiding the true extent of inequities.

#BiologicalWeapons #HybridWarfare #Biosecurity #China #USA Two Illegal Biolabs Reveal Gaps in U.S. Biosecurity lawfaremedia.org/article/two-il… Last month, law enforcement officials launched an investigation into a suspected biolab in the Las Vegas home of Chinese national Zhu Jia Bei. Two years prior, Zhu had been arrested and indicted for his involvement with a similarly unauthorized biolab in Reedley, California. He also maintains extensive connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Zhu may not be alone: CCP-linked biolabs on American soil raise serious concerns about foreign surveillance, intellectual property theft, and deliberate threats to public health and national security. Zhu’s story brings to light an uncomfortable truth: U.S. policymakers seem to have little understanding of how many unauthorized biolabs are operating in the United States. They are unprepared to counter the biological hazards such labs may produce, putting Americans’ safety at risk. Policymakers must take immediate action to protect Americans and strengthen federal oversight of unauthorized biological research activity. [...]

#BiologicalWeapons #Threat #USA #Deterrence #Biotechnology Biodeterrence in an Era of Convergent Threats inss.ndu.edu/news/Article/4… [...] As noted in both the document and the symposium, advancements in synthetic biology, gene editing, high-throughput genomic sequencing, neuroscience and computational biology have lowered the barriers, and accelerated the pace of manipulating biological systems. While such developments are not inherently malign (i.e.- what is referred to as malum in se), they facilitate breakthroughs that are dually-usable. For example, new methods of vaccine design can be repurposed to enhance viral transmissibility or immune evasion; and biomanufacturing platforms designed to produce therapeutic proteins could be used to synthesize toxins or other pathogenic substances. [...] Report available at: inss.ndu.edu/Portals/82/Doc…

#BiologicalWeapons #Canada #WW2 New book (in French): Le Projet N: Grosse-Île, l'arme secrète de la Seconde Guerre mondiale septentrion.qc.ca/catalogue/le-p…

#BiologicalWeapons #Toxins #Ricin #Germany #Trial Jugendliche Experimente mit Sprengstoff und biologischen Waffen führen zu Sozialstunden berliner-zeitung.de/news/17-jaehri… [From German] [...] The prosecution saw no evidence that the young man had intended to harm or injure anyone. Rather, investigators stated that he had been driven by a scientific and experimental interest. In its ruling, the court in Riesa largely followed the prosecution’s submission. Due to the defendant’s young age, the trial was held in camera. The verdict is not yet final.

#BiologicalWeapons #Smallpox #War #USA #Inocculation Excerpt: How George Washington Weaponized Smallpox Inoculation undark.org/2026/03/13/exc… [...] Washington knew smallpox well. The colonies had experienced some outbreaks, but they had not been as large or as frequent as those that had taken place back in England. This alone gave him pause, because while medical science at the time hadn’t developed the tools to tackle other serious diseases, it had made great strides against smallpox. So awful and devastating was the disease that extraordinary attention was being given to try and defeat it. [...]

#ChemicalWeapons #Kurds #Halabja #Commemmoration Halabja Massacre still haunts the Kurdish people after nearly four decades ilkha.com/english/world/… [...] Perhaps most damning than the attack itself was the world's response—or lack thereof. The United Nations dispatched a medical team that confirmed the use of chemical weapons, including mustard gas and unidentified nerve agents. Yet the Security Council issued a mild statement that did not even name Iraq as the perpetrator. Halabja was not an isolated incident. Documented records show at least 21 smaller-scale chemical attacks against Kurdish civilians before March 16, 1988. None prompted meaningful international action. [...]

#ChemicalWeapons #Kurds #Halabja #Commemmoration Discover Iraq: Halabja- Where land, memory, and resilience intertwine shafaq.com/amp/en/Report/… [...] Halabja’s name is indelibly tied to the chemical attack it suffered on March 16, 1988. In less than five hours, Iraqi warplanes under Saddam Hussein’s regime unleashed a lethal combination of mustard gas and nerve agents across the city. The result was catastrophic: more than 3,200 people died on the spot, and the death toll is believed to exceed 5,000. Most of the victims were civilians, women, children, and the elderly. “I saw people laughing hysterically, then falling dead,” one survivor recalled. “The silence that followed was worse than the screams.” The attack formed part of a broader military campaign aimed at quelling Kurdish resistance during the final stages of the Iran–Iraq War. Its aftermath remains visible today. Survivors continue to suffer from cancer, chronic respiratory illnesses, birth defects, and profound psychological trauma. Despite the scale of the crime, fewer than 15 individuals involved in the massacre have ever faced prosecution. In 2010, the Iraqi High Criminal Tribunal formally recognized the Halabja assault as an act of genocide. [...]

#ChemicalWeapons #RiotControl #Georgia #Camite #OPCW #Justice “Opposition Alliance”: We are starting active communication with France so that an investigation is launched against Bidzina Ivanishvili interpressnews.ge/en/article/146… [...] Second, there is the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the recommendation in the Moscow Mechanism regarding cooperation with this organization in investigating the alleged use of chemical weapons. We understand that those who used chemical agents against their own citizens will not cooperate with such an investigation. Therefore, we are starting active coordination with our international partners so they address the OPCW and request that it launch an investigation according to its statute. This would be an investigative process over which the regime would have no influence. [...]

#ChemicalWeapons #BiologicalWeapons #ArtificialIntelligence #Government #RiskManagement AI companies are hiring chemical weapons experts for safety — while embedded in military systems siliconcanals.com/sc-w-ai-compan… [...] On the surface, this looks like responsible corporate behaviour: hire domain experts to build guardrails before something goes wrong. But place these job listings alongside the broader institutional picture — Anthropic’s Claude AI embedded in Palantir systems and deployed in US military operations, the company simultaneously suing the Department of Defence, and a complete absence of international regulation governing any of this — and a more complex story emerges. One about the structural contradictions facing AI companies as they attempt to serve both safety and scale, both principle and profit. [...]