Conference on Norm Contestation and Compliance: The Prohibition of Chemical and Biological Weapons (CBW)

Researchers Almuntaser Albalawi, Veronika Klymova and Una Jakob (from left) at the CWBNet-Conference.

On October 22 and 23, PRIF hosted an interdisciplinary conference on norm contestation and compliance in the CBW prohibition regimes. The conference welcomed experts from the fields of law and political science, as well as practitioners in the areas of concern.

PRIF hosted the con­ference together with the Berlin office of IFSH on behalf of the research net­work CBWNet, which aims to iden­tify options to compre­hensively strengthen the norms against chemical and biological weapons. The research project is jointly carried out by PRIF and the Institute for Peace Re­search and Security Policy at the Uni­versity of Hamburg (ISFH), the Chair for Public Law and International Law at the University of Gie­ßen (JLU) and the Carl Fried­rich Weiz­säcker-Centre for Science and Peace Research (ZNF) at the Uni­versity of Ham­burg.

On the first day of the con­ference, industry expert Dr. Detlef Männig gave a presen­tation on historical norm con­testation and the use of chemical weapons in the 20th century. He discussed three cases of vio­lations of the non-use norm. The second presen­tation by Dr. Alexander Kelle (IFSH) analysed varia­tions in authori­tarian norm contestation, using Russia’s contes­tation of the investigation norm in relation to CW use in Syria as a case study.

The second day was kicked off by Bruno Cevallos (Centro de Altos Estudios Nacio­nales, Lima, Peru), who raised the question of whether the emer­gence of biologically derived riot-­control agents reveals critical gaps in the CBW prohibition regimes. This was followed by presen­tations on the violation and enforce­ment of CW norms. In this context, disarma­ment consultant Dr. Ralf Trapp focused on investi­gations of chemical weapons use in Syria, followed by a presentation by Dr. Barry de Vries (JLU), on the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine.

The final panel featured presen­tations by Almuntaser Albalawi (UNIDIR, Geneva), who spoke about concep­tual conside­rations related to compliance with the norms against CBW, and Veronika Klymova (PRIF), who discussed compliance with CBW norms from the perspective of moral psy­chology. Finally, Dr. Una Jakob (PRIF) presen­ted her research on restoring com­pliance with CBW norms in the con­text of changing state identity, such as in the case of Syria.

The contributions to this conference will be pub­lished by CBWNet in a working paper.