Biological Arms Limitation Law

GENERAL ASSEMBLY RESOLUTION AT VOTE

Biological Arms Limitation Law
A resolution to slash worldwide military spending.


Category: Global Disarmament

Strength: Mild

Proposed by: Bears Armed Mission

Description: The World Assembly,

Understanding that some nations may be tempted to use biological weapons because the self-replicating and self-spreading properties that these weapons commonly possess can make them relatively cheap, and perhaps also for their potential to terrify peoples into submission,

Recognising that those same properties, along with the risk of mutation, make controlling or even predicting the scale of effects that such weapons will have extremely difficult,

Aware that nations who anticipate the use of such weapons against their forces may be able to protect those forces against the attacks much more easily than they can protect their civilian populations, that many such weapons act too slowly to be useful tactically anyway, and that any such weapons that are actually virulent enough to be useful either tactically or as deterrents are probably so virulent that they pose an extremely serious threat to civilian populations,

Believing that unleashing weapons that are likely to spread uncontrollably and devastate civilian populations, perhaps in neutral nations as well as within belligerents, is both unwise and morally unacceptable;


1. Defines the term ‘biological weapons’ for the purpose of this resolution as covering any and all weapons involving organisms that cause diseases, that are parasites, that biologically release substances poisonous to their intended targets, and/or that transfer any organisms from any of the former three categories to new locations;

2. Confirms that this resolution does not restrict member nations' prepartion and use of vaccines against diseases;

3. Permits member nations to use biological weapons against non-sapient targets within their own territories and within the territories of any other nations whose governments have given informed and uncoerced consent to this, subject to any limits set by those nations’ own laws, if and only if they can be certain that those weapons will not spread uncontrollably and affect any targets other than those officially intended;

4. Permits member nations to obtain, produce, and store, biological weapons for the purposes of research into counter-measures against those weapons and/or for developing weapons that meet the limits within clause #2, subject to any limits set by those nations’ own laws, if and only if they maintain only the minimum stocks of those weapons that could reasonably be required for these purposes and they keep those stocks properly secure against both theft and accidental release;

5. Forbids member nations to obtain, produce, own, store, and/or use, biological weapons for any purposes not explicitly allowed under this resolution’s terms; to obtain, produce, own, store, and/or use, equipment that is only useable for producing and/or deploying biological weapons, likewise; to transfer any such weapons and/or equipment to any other nations, likewise; or to allow any other nations or other bodies to do any of those things within the member nations' own territories;

6. Requires that member nations promptly either destroy any stocks of biological weapons and/or related equipment that this resolution forbids them to own, or transfer that materiel to another member nation that is properly capable and willing to do that job for them.