Working Paper by the Friend of the Chair on Compliance Measures : Declaration Formats : The Relationship between Facility and Site (WP.215)
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BWC/AD HOC GROUP/WP.215
10 September 1997
Original: ENGLISH
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Eighth session
Geneva, 15 September - 3 October 1997
Working Paper submitted by the Friend of the Chair
on Compliance Measures
DECLARATION FORMATS: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FACILITY AND SITE
I. The current definitions of Facility and Site
In the Ad Hoc Group work under the Friend of the Chair on Definitions of terms and objective criteria, the current draft definitions of the terms "facility" and "site" are:
[Facility: A combination of physical structures, equipment, workforce and principal associated support infrastructure whether under construction, operational or non-operational.] [for [the][either][research,] development, production, testing, processing, stockpiling, otherwise acquiring or retaining microbial or other biological agents or toxins].]
Site: A geographically defined location or area having an identifiable boundary that contains [or has contained (in a time frame to be specified)] one or more facilities.
II. The implicit relationship between a facility and its site
Notwithstanding the variations in scope resulting from the square bracketed parts of these two definitions, and the fact that neither of these definitions has been agreed, there is a general understanding that the term facility would refer to an operational or functional entity whereas a site has a geographical basis. Without prejudice to any further work on this issue under the guidance of the Friend of the Chair on Definitions of terms and objective criteria, it is reasonable to deduce from this general understanding that two different situations could be encountered in practice:
(a) A facility, as the functional entity, has the same geographic basis as the site, and thus the boundary of the facility and the boundary of the site is one and the same. All the scientific and support elements essential to the day to day running of the facility and to its aims and objectives will be present within this common boundary. As long as the facility is essentially self contained in this way, it should be irrelevant whether or not there are occasional scientific
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and technical interactions on an ad hoc basis between the facility and adjoining or nearby organizations.
(b) A facility is smaller than the site in which it sits. This situation usually arises when the facility (which may have its own boundary such as the walls of a building) is not self sufficient and thus needs to interact in some way with staff or equipment located elsewhere one the site, perhaps under a different operational control. In other words, the site provides an infrastructure to support the activities of the facility present within it. Often, these arrangements have developed because more than on facility is contained within the site and it is convenient and cost effective to share some scientific and/or support functions in a common infrastructure. The scope of such interactions may be expected to vary considerably from site to site, and there may also be marked differences in their intensity and frequency. Elements that may be found in a common infrastructure include:
- operational or budgetary control;
- administrative support, such as for purchasing goods or for making travel
arrangements;
- animal houses;
- record-keeping system;
- engineering workshops;
- effluent/waste handling areas;
- medical section or first aid service;
- health and safety monitoring and advisory staff;
- security staff and measures;
- fire-fighting staff and measures;
- building/equipment maintenance staff;
- laboratories which provide inputs essential to the operation of
the facility. The rationale could be the cost effectiveness of using very
high cost equipment and rare specialist skills. Examples could be laboratories
specializing in mass spectrometry or in aerosol studies.
III. The scope of information to be provided by facilities triggered for declaration under the future Protocol
During the work of the Ad Hoc Group it has often been stated that declarations in the future Protocol need to be carefully focused to provide transparency of those activities and facilities most relevant to the provisions of the Convention. In this way the system of declarations will provide the maximum stimulus to confidence in compliance whilst incurring the minimum administrative burden and cost for States Parties and their declarable facilities, and for the future Organization under the Convention. This could be achieved in two ways. First, by ensuring that the set of triggers captures the types of facility most relevant to the Convention. Secondly, by ensuring that the information required from each facility is not unnecessarily detailed or intrusive, but is sufficiently broad and detailed to achieve
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the objective - to build confidence that the facility in question is engaged only in activities legitimate under the Convention.
The scientific and technical activities with potential relevance to the provisions of the BWC are inherently more diffuse than the activities that need to be addressed in arms control regimes for nuclear or chemical weapons. This breadth of scope is reflected in the range of technical activities that are being discussed by the Ad Hoc Group in the context of potential declaration triggers. The other respect in which compliance monitoring under the BWC is distinct arises from the ability of micro-organisms to reproduce: this means that the use of mass balance (quantitative) principles in compliance monitoring is of considerably less value than where nuclear or chemical items are concerned. It follows that to build confidence, declarations under the BWC need to place more emphasis on the qualitative nature and context of the activities of the facility as a whole, rather than focusing on amounts of agents produced or handled. Proposals put forward already in the Ad Hoc Group that declarations should include information on key aspects of the facility such as the ownership, main areas of activity, existence of biocontainment capabilities, and presence of specified items of equipment, are consistent with this philosophy.
IV. Information that could be declared about activities outside the triggered facility but within the boundary of the site
Given the need for declarations to inform about the overall nature of the activities and capabilities of a facility, if the BWC declaration regime is to be equable it is important that the same scope of information should be provided whether a facility is self sufficient or whether some of its essential scientific or support functions are carried out elsewhere on the site. This may mean that in some cases information should be provided about activities on the site outside the strict confines of the specific facility.
Equally, where the declaring facility is self sufficient but the site is larger than the facility, it would build confidence if outline information were in any case to be provided about other facilities on the site active in scientific and technical fields relevant to the provisions of the Convention. This transparency would be an acknowledgement of the potential for other such facilities on the site to interact with the declaring facility.
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