Convention on Biological Weapons in 2020 to be chaired by Sri Lanka

COLOMBO (News 1st) - The Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on Biological Weapons, which concluded its four-day session in Geneva yesterday, unanimously endorsed Sri Lanka as the Chair of the Meeting of States Parties to be held in 2020. Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva Ambassador A.L.A. Azeez took over the Chairmanship of the 2020 States Parties’ Meeting from Ambassador Yann Hwang of France, the outgoing Chair. The Convention on the prohibition of the development, production and stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons and on their destruction, popularly known as Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) was the first multilateral disarmament treaty, banning the production of an entire category of biological and toxin weapons. According to a report to the Meeting of State Parties to the Convention, as of August 2019, 183 states had ratified the Biological Weapons Convention, while Egypt, Haiti, Somalia, Syria, and Tanzania had signed but not ratified the convention. Ten states, the Republic of Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Israel, Kiribati, Micronesia, Namibia, South Sudan, and Tuvalu, have neither signed nor ratified the convention.