What
HSP does
HSP work is
of two broad kinds: pro-active, and community-building. In the first,
we develop new ideas for public policy on CBW and ways of thinking
about policy proposals, all of which we try to communicate through
the several national and international networks that HSP has built
up over the years, and through other outlets. In the second kind
of work, we seek to strengthen and expand those parts of the policy-shaping
community that may generate or be receptive to sound ideas on CBW
policy and ways of thinking. We try to promote this outcome by bringing
newly trained people into the community, by convening seminars,
and by furnishing analysis and information of the highest quality.
Altogether, HSP has ten main programme-elements, half of them pro-active
and half community-building:
Community-building
work
Pro-active work
Each one is
summarized briefly below. Additional detail is available via our
webpages on Research,
Training, Seminars,
and Information
work.
Gathering
and communicating information
This first programme-element is a systematic and focussed information-collection,
information-processing, information-storage and information-dissemination
activity that includes the publication of what has become the journal
of record in the field, namely The
CBW Conventions Bulletin. Central to this information work is
maintenance of what is probably the world's largest archive outside
government of published and unpublished papers on CBW. This living
archive is the 'Sussex
Harvard Information Bank' (SHIB). Information is registered
in searchable electronic data-bases.
top
Seminars
HSP runs a large and varied programme of outreach seminars, workshops
and colloquia bringing together scholars and governmental officials
at local, national and international levels. Individually these
meetings are not always publicized, participation mostly being by
invitation. The programme now includes the Sussex
CBW Days, the HSP
London CBW Seminar, the HSP
Cambridge CBW Colloquia, and the workshops
of the Pugwash Study Group on Implementation of the CBW Conventions
that HSP has long been organizing each year in the Netherlands and
Switzerland. A series of six research seminars funded by the UK
Economic & Social Research Council, New
Approaches to WMD Proliferation, took place during 2005-2007.
top
Co-operation
with the OPCW
This element continues the active collaboration between HSP and
what is now the Technical Secretariat of the Organization
for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) that began in
1993 while the OPCW was being built to discharge its function of
overseeing implementation of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention.
The element involves the secondment of an HSP researcher to work
at OPCW headquarters in The Hague. This arrangement provides HSP
with reliable up-to-date information, much of which is disseminated
in the regular 'Progress in the Hague' feature of The
CBW Conventions Bulletin. Further, it provides the OPCW itself
with the informational resources and outside perspective of HSP.
top
Service
on public bodies, and other outreach activity
This element includes involvement in the work of other international
organizations (such as the World
Health Organization, the Commission of the European Communities
and the International Committee of
the Red Cross) and also of non-governmental organizations active
on CBW issues (such as Pugwash,
Human Rights Watch and the BioWeapons
Prevention Project); service on government advisory committees
concerned with CBW matters; service on other public bodies addressing
CBW topics (such as committees of the US
National Academies); and the availability of HSP staff to journalists.
top
Training
This element offers instruction and guidance to young people who
wish to enter the community that HSP seeks to foster. The university
environment of HSP provides good opportunity for this, which HSP
has been developing gradually.
top
Short-term
research
HSP undertakes three different kinds of research. Short-term research
is done chiefly in support of presentations at the regular seminars
and workshops organized by HSP or conferences at which HSP personnel
are invited to speak. It is also done in support of interventions
in the media, such as newspaper op-eds. More privately, research
of this type is done in support of less public outreach activities
as well, including work for governmental advisory committees and
for ad hoc working parties convened by the World Health Organization,
for example, the European Commission and the US National Academies.
top
Longer term research
Aimed principally at identifying possible policy initiatives and
realistic ways of taking them forward, ten projects currently constitute
this second category of HSP research activity.
top
Field
investigations
The third kind of HSP research activity is exemplified by the on-site
investigation of the anthrax outbreak of 1979 in Sverdlovsk, USSR,
organized and led in 1992 and 1993 by the Harvard HSP director,
Matthew Meselson. Its definitive findings have been published in
the Proceedings of the US National
Academy of Sciences, in the journal Science,
and in the book Anthrax:
the investigation of a deadly outbreak (University of California
Press, 1999) by HSP member Jeanne Guillemin. This inquiry followed
an earlier HSP investigation of the 'yellow rain' phenomenon in
southeast Asia, which demonstrated that the yellow materials at
first thought to be samples of a CBW agent were in actuality the
harmless droppings of large swarms of wild honey-bees. These findings
were published in Nature,
Science and
Foreign Policy. Since
then, HSP has involved itself in preliminary inquiries regarding
several other alleged CBW events (in, for example, Iran, Iraqi Kurdistan,
Burma, southern Africa, Sudan and Palestine) but these inquiries
have not yet proceeded to field investigation.
top
Ad
hoc research conferences
In order to advance lines of research or policy initiatives that
seem promising, HSP convenes ad hoc workshops that enable it to
explore particular topics or bring together particular groups of
people. The last such workshop, at Sussex in October 2001, was on
the 'general purpose criterion' that underpins the CWC but whose
proper implementation requires special measures; the UK government
is currently putting into practice recommendations from the workshop.
The research project on how the OPCW was built proceeded through
a series of small ad hoc workshops and conferences designed to solicit
and capture oral history relating to the OPCW Preparatory Commission.
top
Policy
initiatives
In this the most directly policy-related of the ten programme elements,
all HSP's research, communication and other dissemination resources
are brought together in a concerted effort to advance a particular
concept or idea into implemented public policy. For an organization
as leanly staffed as HSP, only one such initiative can be undertaken
at a time. The present initiative originates in HSP research begun
during the mid-1990s to examine the possible contributions that
international criminal law might make to strengthening the international
regime against CBW armament. From this emerged the idea of creating
a new international treaty, alongside the Biological Weapons Convention
of 1972 and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993, using existing
legal precedents and international agreements, that would confer
on national courts jurisdiction over individuals present in their
national territory, regardless of nationality or official position,
who order, direct, or knowingly render substantial assistance to
the use of biological or chemical weapons anywhere. Encouraged by
recent expressions of support from a number of European governments,
we are now moving this idea through the relevant academic and legal
communities into the domain of public policy, to which end we are
translating the draft into other languages; completing a detailed
legal commentary on it; and continuing our consultations with specialist
advisers to ensure that the Draft Convention remains attuned to
its changing legal and political environment.
top
|
