Problems of Biosafety in Current International Law

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. The presented article is devoted to an extremely curious and, without exaggeration, urgent topic. The authors seek to understand the content and legal concept of biosafety in International Law. The researchers seek to list the biosafety issues in order to define concrete aspects related to responsibility of the States for using biological weapons. The authors analyze new legal trends on ensuring the international biosafety. The article is focused on legal issues by raising many questions about what should be considered a just war in the view of international humanitarian law, the issues of fundamental principles in current international law (the principle use of force, the right of States to self-defense in case of a bioattack, the principle of the peaceful settlement of international disputes, the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of States, arms control, and responsibility). The writers give an overview of new types of sovereignty such as biosovereignty, cyber sovereignty, cyberbiosovereignty, and genomic sovereignty of States, the legal concept of international biocrimes (genomocide), the legal classification of bioterrorism, bioaggression, biopolitics, and bioeconomics. The authors consider the importance of facilitating the broad interpretation of the concept of biosafety.MATERIALS AND METHODS. The research uses general scientific and special cognitive techniques wherein legal analysis and synthesis, systemic, formal-legal, comparative-legal, historical-legal and dialectical methods are applied.RESEARCH RESULTS. The authors found out that despite the prohibition of biological weapon there are still other urgent issues such as an international control mechanism for monitoring the non-proliferation of biological weapons has not been established yet. The Protocol to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) has not been adopted yet. The study concludes with an idea that the problem of banning certain types of biomedical research has not been solved in some States and at the international level. The authors note such important problems as the lack of an international control mechanism for monitoring the prohibition of the development, production and stockpiling of bacteriological (biological) and toxin weapons, as well as the threat to the safety of genomic research and confidentiality of genetic data. In this paper, we interpret the concept of biosafety rather broadly, considering the issues typical of allied industries. Biosecurity and biosafety are directly related to ensuring environmental security, marine security, food security and outer space security. The researchers paid attention to the issue of legal regulation of ensuring environmental, biological, and food safety. Due to this fact, it is hard to do so with regard to the causal link between the acts (bioterrorism) of state agencies, the violation of the principles of international law, standards of human rights and the consequences that occurred. It is not clear from the text of the BTWC Convention which international organ/body can investigate such acts in international affairs and which norm of international law directly should be applied.DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS. Following a review of the content, the authors raise possible problems, strategies, suggestions and guidelines for ensuring biosafety in international law. The authors conclude that near future new categories of weapons of mass destruction appear in the world, moreover, genetic weapons should be classified as weapons of mass destruction, along with chemical, biological, bacteriological, and nuclear weapons. Technological developments will trigger the issues of fundamental principles in current international law. The authors came to the conclusion about extension of the universal jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in case biological and genetic weapons are used. The authors encourage the complement to the international legal regulation the necessity to adopt a Protocol to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), establishing an international control mechanism for verifying prohibitions on the development, production, and stockpiling of biological weapons is obvious. The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction adopted in 1993, which contains a mechanism for verifying compliance with the prohibitions of the Convention, can be considered a precedent for the effective regulation of the circulation of hazardous substances all over the world.