With the suspected use of chemical weapons in Mariupol in the Ukraine, chemical and biological weapons have once again aroused public interest. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is now funding a new research project at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH) to ban these types of weapons.
The joint research project CBWNet „Strengthening the norms against chemical and biological weapons: the CBW network” runs for four years. Scientist from various disciplines will research on how to control these types of weapons more effectively and how to strengthen their prohibition.
The security policy developments of the last decades, such as the emergence of a new international terrorism, have led to new deployment scenarios for chemical and biological weapons. Already in the 1990s, the Japanese Aum sect carried out an attack on the Tokyo subway using the neurotoxic substance sarin. In the Syrian civil war, more than 300 uses of chemical weapons have been documented.
“The world is facing fundamental geopolitical changes and with Russia blocking the UN Security Council's inquiry on the chemical weapons attack in Syria, the field of chemical and biological disarmament is facing major challenges. Providing analysis and identifying ways to strengthen these norms against chemical and biological weapons is at the heart of our project”, explained Dr Oliver Meier, Senior Researcher at the Berlin Office of the IFSH.
The joint research project CBWNet is carried out by the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH), which is also consortium leader of CBWNet, the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF), the Chair for Public Law and International Law at the University of Gießen and the Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker-Centre for Science and Peace Research at the University of Hamburg (ZNF). The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research with almost three million Euros. The IFSH receives about 864.000 Euros.
Contact: cbwnet@ifsh.de, @cbwnet, www.cbwnet.org