The 1925 Geneva Protocol

This limitation of the Protocol s prohibition of chemical warfare today, arguably, is of only limited relevance, first, since it is doubtful whether and to what extent these reservations did at aU affect the parallel prohibition of chanical warfare in 

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Attempts to ban chemical warfare always fell short of success. Even though the United States signed the 1925 Geneva Protocol, the Senate would not ratify it. 

The ban on the use of chemical weapons, as codified in the 1925 Geneva Protocol, was considered to constitute international law, applicable to all states. Yugoslavia had ratified the protocol and at no time indicated any desire to repudiate its treaty obligations. In earlier years certain countries, including the United States which used massive quantities of tear gas in the Vietnam War, maintained the protocol did not ban the use of riot control agents. However, incapacitating agents, like BZ, were not included in this apparent exception. 

Chapter 3 is concerned with the period between the two world wars. It describes the ways in which public opinion in the field of chemical warfare was aroused after the experience of the First World War, and to some extent how public opinion was then exploited. The chapter considers some of the effects of this including how it stimulated the negotiation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, one of the most important pieces of conventional international law prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons. The chapter also considers the national policies and programmes relating to chemical warfare in the inter-war period and examines important chemical warfare discoveries in these decades. 

The CWC is just over 10 years old. By comparison, the 1925 Geneva Protocol was concluded 80 years ago, the NPT and PTBT around 50 years ago, and the BWC over 30 years ago. The CTBT, concluded in 1996, is not yet in force. 

It is also of some significance for universality purposes that nearly two-thirds of the States not Party to the CWC have already joined one or more of the IAEA Statute, the 1925 Geneva Protocol, the BWC and the Ottawa Convention. 

The 1925 Geneva Protocol was actually the League of Nations Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare. 

It can be seen from the text of the 1925 Geneva Protocol that each Power will be bound as regards other Powers which have already deposited their ratifications . It was consequently not surprising that many States qualified their ratifications with reservations such as that made by the United Kingdom that ... 

As of February 2005, there are 134 States Parties to the 1925 Geneva Protocol. In addition, many of the States Parties, which entered reservations, have lifted those reservations as they are incompatible with the obligations under the later Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention. However, there have been successive UnitedNations General Assembly resolutions on measures to uphold the authority of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, such as that adopted in October 2004 which include language that ... 

Calls upon those States that continue to maintain reservations to the 1925 Geneva Protocol to... 

The biological weapons (BW) prohibition regime is built around the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC), the 1925 Geneva Protocol, and the Australia Group, which expanded its activities from CW-related dual-use goods and technologies into the BW realm in 1990. 

As the above quoted Article I makes clear, five activities related to BW - development, production, acquisition by other means, stockpiling, retention - are explicitly banned. Yet, the scope of the BW prohibition regime is wider than these five activities and the treaty contains several more normative guidelines for state action. Central to the BW prohibition regime is the non-use norm, which is explicitly spelled out in the 1925 Geneva Protocol and implicitly contained... 

Henceforth called the 1925 Geneva Protocol, original text in League of Nations Treaty Series, Vol. 94, available on numerous websites. 

Second, he decided to resubmit the 1925 Geneva Protocol to the U.S. Senate for ratification. The senate had refused to ratify the treaty when it was first signed, and President Harry S Truman had withdrawn the treaty from the senate in 1947. 

Early Twentieth Century Negotiations The Hague Conferences The Washington Arms Conference The 1925 Geneva Protocol... 

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