A Draft Convention to Prohibit Biological and Chemical Weapons Under International Criminal Law

.:   Any development, production, acquisition, or use of biological and chemical weapons is the result of decisions and actions of individual persons, whether they are government officials, commercial suppliers, weapons experts, or terrorists. The international conventions that prohibit these weapons, the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) of 1972 and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) of 1993, however, are directed primarily to the actions of states, and address the matter of individual responsibility to only a limited degree. Article 4 of the BWC and Article 7 of the CWC require that each state party prohibit activities on its territory that are prohibited to a state party. The CWC explicitly requires each state party to enact penal legislation to this effect, applicable also to activities of its own nationals anywhere in the world. Nevertheless, the BWC and the CWC stop short of requiring a state party to establish criminal jurisdiction applicable to foreign nationals on its territory who commit biological or chemical weapons offenses elsewhere—and neither convention contains provisions dealing with extradition.