Biological weapons: Kazakhstan’s proposal for an international organisation five years later
On 23 September 2020, amid the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan addressed the UN General Assembly (UNGA) and advanced the establishment of an International Agency for Biosafety (IABS). Just over five years later, on 14 October 2025, the Kazakh Ministry for Foreign Affairs organised a one-day seminar in Almaty. Its title: 50th Anniversary of the BTWC: From Commitment to Action – the International Agency for Biological Security (IABS) initiative.
The timing of the seminar was perfect. At the start of the month, the Chairperson of the Working Group (WG) on the Strengthening of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), Ambassador Frederico S. Duque Estrada Meyer of Brazil, published the draft final report on the series of measures that the state parties have been considering since the 9th Review Conference in 2022. The document includes two decision proposals: one on establishing a mechanism for international cooperation and assistance under BTWC Article X, and a second on a review and advice mechanism for scientific and technological developments relevant to the treaty. Another possible WG outcome may be the setting up of an open-ended working group mandated to address a series of verification and compliance measures.
I was one of the first to comment on President Tokayev’s proposal. The blog posting generated quite a bit of press interest in Kazakhstan. Five years on, Kazakhstan has further shaped its idea of an international agency, taking into consideration comments by BTWC state parties and academics. The proposals in the draft final report of the BTWC WG, if realised, will have a significant effect on a future institutional setup. This commentary is an expanded version of my remarks at the seminar in Almaty, exploring the implications of the BTWC WG draft report on the IABS proposal.
The original proposal and its context
In 2020, the UNGA was celebrating its 75th time in session. Yet, SARS-CoV-2 cast a dark shadow over the anniversary. In their statements, many heads of state or government, ministers, and other dignitaries unsurprisingly reflected on the pandemic and the challenges ahead. Some introduced constructive suggestions to address the factors that led to the outbreak. Others put forward ideas to strengthen health crisis response and management capacities.
To increase the international response capacity in view of the coronavirus outbreak, President Tokayev suggested five initiatives, the final one being the launching ‘of a biological weapons control system’, which was ‘becoming more acute than ever’ in light of the pandemic. He therefore proposed to ‘establish a special multilateral body – the International Agency for Biological Safety – based on the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and accountable to the UN Security Council’.
The centrality of the global SARS-CoV-2 crisis in his presentation was also apparent in his four other suggestions: the upgrading of national health institutions with the support from developed nations and UN agencies, the removal of politics from the vaccine to reach an agreement on COVID-19 trade and investment that would protect global production and supply chains, the revision of the International Health Regulations to increase capacities of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and its members to prevent and respond to diseases, and the examination of a possible network of Regional Centres for Disease Control and Biosafety under the UN auspices.
Over the next few years, Kazakh diplomacy promoted the IABS idea in BTWC meetings and other international forums. While many states, regional organisations, and civil society broadly welcomed the idea of an international agency, there were also some reservations.
Having an international organisation support and oversee the implementation of the BTWC is an aspiration that goes back to the treaty’s negotiation in the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, the address to the UNGA left room for ambiguity about whether the IABS was to be part of the BTWC or become another specialised UN agency. If the former, then some serious questions arose concerning the accountability to the UN Security Council and the overlap with the mandates of other health-oriented organisations, such as the WHO, the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH, then known as the Office International des Epizooties, or OIE), or the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). If the latter, the position relative to and relationships with the WHO, WOAH and FAO remained obscure.
It should be noted that biosafety and biosecurity translate into a single word in the Kazakh language (биоқауіпсіздік – bïoqawipsizdik) and Russian (биобезопасность – biobezopasnost’) and that any references to ‘biosafety’ in the proposal likely cover biosecurity measures as well.
President Tokayev’s suggestion likely had its origins in the measures taken by the Kazakh authorities in the early months of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. At the BACAC-ISTC SAC Conference on Future Challenges of Biosafety and Biosecurity, held in Almaty on 14-16 October 2025, Dr Zauresh Zhumadilova, General Director of the Masgut Aikimbayev National Scientific Center for Especially Dangerous Infections, reviewed the biosafety issues in Kazakhstan. On 27 May 2020, the National Council for Public Trust, which promotes political reforms and public dialogue, called for a biosafety system that should operate according to common standards and ensure effective cross-border cooperation and response to threats. The national law that resulted from that call identified as major threats ‘the occurrence of natural, man-made, and social emergencies affecting potentially dangerous biological objects’ and ‘acts of terrorism and/or sabotage involving the use of pathogenic biological agents’. The law also stipulates that should rules in an international treaty ratified by Kazakhstan differ from the provisions in the national law, then the international treaty shall prevail.
Zhumadilova’s review of international and national biological threats and areas of international cooperation clearly indicates the seamless consideration of natural and unusual outbreaks, accidents and deliberate spread of pathogens in the national law. This approach is also reflected in the response measures to internal and external biological threats. She located the Kazakh call for an IABS in the framework of (national) responses to external biological threats. The final slide of her presentation (English slide as projected next to the original in Russian) concluded that ‘Biological security is not just a medical issue, but a strategic national security priority. Success in this area depends on the state’s ability to act proactively, rather than reactively, by investing in science, infrastructure and inter-agency cooperation.’
It would thus seem that the first four suggestions in President Tokayev’s address to the UNGA emanated from core principles guiding the drafting of the future Law on biological safety of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Presidential signature on 21 May 2022) and that, in the international setting of the UNGA, the proposed IABS came to rest like a pediment on those pillars. (The text of the law does not mention the IABS.)
The BTWC WG and conceptual development of the IABS
From 2023 onwards, the Kazakh initiative began moving closer to the idea of a biological weapon (BW) control system. That year, the BTWC WG started its deliberations in accordance with its mandate and meeting schedule decided by the 9th Review Conference in 2022. Ambassador Meyer, the chairperson, hopes to conclude the work in December 2025 and issued a draft report on 1 October. The WG aims to ‘identify, examine and develop specific and effective measures, including possible legally-binding measures, and to make recommendations to strengthen and institutionalise the Convention in all its aspects, to be submitted to States Parties for consideration and any further action’. It has considered measures on:
- International cooperation and assistance under Article X,
- Scientific and technological developments relevant to the Convention,
- Confidence-building and transparency,
- Compliance and verification,
- National implementation of the Convention,
- Assistance, response and preparedness under Article VII, and
- Organisational, institutional and financial arrangements.
Having determined that the IABS fits in the WG agenda, Kazakhstan reviewed the concept. By the end of 2023, it had removed several ambiguities and clarified certain aspects in keeping with the BTWC, even though more work was still needed. It also sought out broader diplomatic support and obtained encouraging responses from, inter alia, the Non-Aligned Movement Contact Group in Response to COVID-19 and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. In its most recent working paper (BWC/WG/5/WP.4 of 28 November 2024), Kazakhstan presented its case on how the IABS could integrate the mechanisms and institutions under consideration by the BTWC WG. It specifically addressed the following topics:
- Verification and compliance,
- Assistance, response, and preparedness – Role of the UN Security Council,
- International cooperation and assistance,
- Scientific and technological developments, and
- Confidence-building measures (CBMs) and transparency.
The document also considered the cost factors of an international institution and its relationships and possible partnerships with various other international organisations.
Challenges ahead
Perhaps the most significant indication of how far the thinking in Astana has evolved is the rebranding of the IABS as the International Agency for Biological Security. This move ties the proposal closer to the BTWC. In meetings to promote the IABS in the margins of the UNGA First Committee last year, states had expressed a preference for the term ‘biosecurity’. Kazakhstan, together with Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, submitted a draft resolution to the First Committee on strengthening and institutionalising the BTWC. In paragraph 4, it
Encourages the Working Group on the strengthening of the Convention to further consider the measures aimed at strengthening and institutionalizing the Convention in all its aspects, in particular on how to proceed on organizational matters within the Working Group, including the possibility of an international agency for biological security and other institutional arrangements.
The passage marked the first modified naming of the IABS.
The First Committee adopted the resolution without a vote on 4 November. Nonetheless, several states explained their vote. Speaking on behalf of its twenty-seven member states and five aligned candidate countries, the European Union expressed its support for the BTWC WG. It also noted that the WG was actively debating a range of institutional solutions for the convention. Therefore, it added, endorsement of a single specific solution was premature before the completion of the WG’s mandate. The United States expressed a similar reservation, stating that it ‘envisions a self-governing organization that supports the implementation of the BWC with a distinct but complementary mandate distinct to the existing international organizations working on biological and global public health’. Switzerland observed that the goal of institutional support should be reached through the BTWC WG rather than by a resolution in the First Committee. Singapore echoed the Swiss observation, adding that ‘a technical implementing agency for the BTWC has operational independence. This will ensure that it is able to carry out its technical mandate, including investigations into potential violations of the BTWC, without undue interference from external parties.’ BTWC state parties should therefore have oversight of the future international organisation, much like the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
From these clarifications, it is clear that the states responded to an earlier iteration of the IABS concept with its ambiguities relating to the connections with other, mainly health-related, international organisations and the proposed UN Security Council’s oversight function.
The Kazakh working paper of November 2024 addressed these concerns. However, the statements also made clear that a future international organisation for the BTWC will have to pass through a dynamic deliberative process.
A second challenge facing the proposal is the level of detail on offer. Together with the updated IABS concept, Kazakhstan issued a second working paper (BWC/WG/5/WP.5 of 28 November 2024) revising a 2023 outline of a draft statute for the IABS. The format is that of an international convention (in the sense of a highly technical, multilaterally negotiated treaty foreseeing an international implementation and oversight organisation) with a preamble and twenty-four articles. Some of the articles approach the detail found in the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). This precision level at the present stage of consideration may deny the IABS concept negotiation flexibility, more so as state parties still need to identify, specify and agree on so many functions of a future institutional setup.
The challenge is already real. The draft BTWC WG report includes concrete decision proposals for two mechanisms, one to facilitate and support the full implementation of international cooperation and assistance (ICA) under BTWC Article X, and a second one to review and assess relevant scientific and technological (S&T) developments and provide state parties with appropriate advice.
The annexe on the ICA mechanism runs for ten pages and includes three appendices with the terms of reference for the ICA programme, the ICA Steering Group, and the ICA Fund.
The one on the S&T advisory mechanism covers eight pages and has two appendices, namely the mechanism’s terms of reference and its regulations.
The implications for the IABS proposal are twofold. The state parties appear to have adopted a modular approach to strengthening the BTWC by identifying areas where concrete progress is within reach, ones that could yield tangible results in the near future, and ones that require more time to explore and mature. Each area of work that reaches the decision-making stage will have received its specific mandate, rules of procedure, and, where appropriate, specific tools. At one future point, the diverse mechanisms will have to be assembled into a single institution, meaning that the respective mandates, processes and decision-making procedures must not only become aligned and streamlined, but also, where proper, be transferred to the new organisation’s decision-making bodies. Furthermore, the future technical secretariat may be assigned roles in the (continuous process of) preparation of decisions in consultation with state parties and the formulation of advice. This methodology would replace the current negotiating process, which involves all state parties in time-restricted sessions interrupted by long intervals.
The second implication is that the rising level of detail and growing complexity of the IABS concept risk pushing the Kazakh proposal out of the meeting room in Geneva. Presently, state parties focus on developing separate mechanisms and negotiating terms of reference, procedures and specific instruments in support of the respective mandates. This process will continue beyond the 10th Review Conference in 2027, and most likely beyond the 11th Review Conference five years after that. The key question thus becomes: how can the IABS concept accompany this process?
How to move ahead?
When President Tokayev launched the idea of an IABS in September 2020, Kazakhstan drew the world’s attention to the BTWC’s need for institutional support. The proposal has had its effects: the adoption without a vote of the Kazakh-led resolution on the institutionalisation of the BTWC in the First Committee in November 2024 meant that all states have accepted the necessity of an international organisation. In the explanation of their vote, several countries voiced reservations about promoting a single model, instead of allowing the future organisation to grow organically through deliberations in Geneva. Still, there is a need to keep the idea of an international institution well-focussed lest it meanders in a thousand directions in endless diplomatic parleys.
One option is to transform the IABS concept into a testbed for ideas on how to construct the institutional support for the BTWC. The idea would be to invite scientists, academics, civil society researchers and other stakeholder communities to prepare blueprints or write reports and papers on specific aspects of a future international organisation. From the many proposals, it would then become possible to synthesise one or more detailed institutional models that take the latest ideas to emerge from Geneva into account. Kazakhstan could then circulate the outputs as technical reports to state parties rather than as working papers in the BTWC meetings. Other countries will likely study the research and design details without feeling the need to formulate a political or diplomatic response. They could be further discussed and perhaps ameliorated on technical or scientific levels before becoming a negotiation proposal.
An additional advantage is that ancillary issues can be approached similarly. Verification, for instance, will undoubtedly have a significant impact on the final design of the international organisation. Deep reflection on why the BTWC needs verification in the light of present and anticipated geopolitical challenges, BW utility in hybrid strategies and actions, S&T developments, and other matters of biorisk management would help to identify what to verify, how to verify, and ultimately, who would carry out the verification activities. The answers to each one of the four questions will ultimately determine the shape of the international structure, the types of required expertise, and the tools and methods for organising the verification activities.
Diplomats in Geneva consider how other international weapon control institutions are organised and function. Which may be interesting, but ultimately has limited utility for designing a novel organisation that should be sufficiently adaptable to changing circumstances to retain its relevancy over the following decades. The testbed, in contrast, could organise in-depth research into how those other organisations were designed relative to the security challenges that dominated the era of their design, development and negotiation. These findings could then inform and stimulate foresighting studies into possible futures in the light of human-made biological threats, whether small or large-scale, and governance models to counter their emergence or mitigate their consequences. Ultimately, such study results will bear on the future implementation of multiple BTWC articles.
In conclusion
President Tokayev’s proposal for an IABS to the UNGA placed the idea of an international organisation firmly on the BTWC agenda. The initial concept has evolved with expert input and consultations as reflected in the detailed working papers put forward by the Kazakh delegation in Geneva.
Meanwhile, the WG established by the 2022 Review Conference appears on the cusp of approving ideas and mechanisms that advance the agenda of strengthening the BTWC in several areas. If the state parties adopt the draft report in December, they would initiate a process of modular institutionalisation of the convention.
Kazakhstan now faces the challenge of adapting its advanced concept for an IABS to the advancements in the BTWC WG to keep it relevant. It implies further review of its working papers without losing sight of the IABS’s purposes. Transforming the current concept into a testbed could be an excellent way to maintain the conceptual dynamic while informing deliberations in Geneva from a technical and scientific perspective. During the CWC negotiations, Canada took such an approach by distributing technical reports and briefing papers, one early example being a systems study of an international CW verification organisation (1987).
In view of the evolving security threats with biological agents, the emerging geopolitical challenges, and S&T developments ahead of us, ‘International Agency for Biosecurity’ might ultimately prove a more apt name for the future institution than, say, ‘Organisation for the Prohibition of Biological Weapons’.
