On December 4 – 7, 2018 the annual Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (BWC) is taking place in Geneva.

Representatives of States Parties to the Convention, relevant international institutions and NGOs attend the event.

Participants are discussing ways to further strengthen the BWC, deepen international cooperation, including in the context of providing technical assistance to States Parties to the Convention to identify and combat threats of pandemic nature and use the results of biological research for peaceful purposes, as well as the outcomes of this year’s Meeting of Experts of BWC Member States.

Head of the delegation of Ukraine to the mentioned event, Permanent Representative of Ukraine in Geneva Y. Klymenko during the general debates stressed upon the important role played by the BWC in the field of disarmament and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Having drawn attention to the full implementation of the Convention by our state, he called for the comprehensive strengthening of the Convention’s regime, including through its further universalization and enhancement of relevant international cooperation. At the same time, Y. Klymenko expressed worries about the collections of microorganisms which were stored at the crucial facilities of Ukraine’s biosecurity system, currently located on the temporarily occupied, as a result of Russian aggression, territories of our country, namely: the Ukrainian anti-plague station in the city of Simferopol, the Crimean republican diagnostic laboratory, as well as the Donetsk and Luhansk regional sanitary and epidemiological stations. As it was stressed upon, these concerns are even further increased in connection with the dangerous militarization by the occupying country of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the recent act of Russian armed aggression against Ukraine in the Kerch Strait and ongoing hostilities by Russia-backed illegal armed groups in the southeast of Ukraine. The Ukrainian side called upon the international community to scrutinize the situation around the above-mentioned elements of the biosecurity system of Ukraine on its temporarily occupied territories.