5th Meeting, 9th Session of the Working Group on the Strengthening of the BWC

Good morning everybody. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, welcome back to the fifth meeting of the ninth session of the Working Group on Strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention. As with our previous meetings, This is a public meeting being held in an in-person format in accordance with the regular practice under the convention. It's also being broadcast live on UN Web TV. Dear colleagues, before we start our formal business, I would like to note that today, 19th of August, is World Humanitarian Day. To mark this commemoration, we will observe a minute of silence at the beginning of our afternoon meeting. In addition, the United Nations Office at Geneva will be hosting a ceremony outside this conference room in Salle du Pas Perdus at 4 p.m. today for one hour. We have been requested to refrain from exiting this room into the Salle de Pas-Perdu during this time. Dear colleagues, yesterday evening the Secretariat circulated another updated version of the draft final report which has been issued as document BWC slash WG slash nine slash CRP dot one slash F dot three dated 18th of August. It was sent to all delegations yesterday by e-mail and printed copies are available in the room. And I imagine that you all read this last night or before breakfast this morning. This Rev 3 version incorporates the text that we managed to turn green yesterday, plus the textual proposals that were made by delegations. This version will be the one on which we work today, in which the Secretariat will show on the screen. As necessary, Further updated versions will be produced during the course of this week so that delegations always have the latest text available to facilitate our work. For your information, we had 90% point two. Clarissa, point two? Yeah, that's what we had and with our meeting Monday and Tuesday, we were able to advance 2%, which is unacceptable. So, what do we do now? I think that we're going to move to small groups because this This room, this planet is very beautiful, but it's very hard to work. I cannot even see people in the back. So we're going to have one group with cluster one. We have cluster two, cluster three, cluster four, and cluster five. So, David and Leonardo, they will approach some delegations if they want to be facilitators. And then six and seven, we're not discussing now. with cluster six consensus, cluster seven MSP. So I will adjourn the meeting now and we're gonna check with some delegations if they want to be facilitators and of course other delegations who want to be in the room, they're more than welcome, okay? So the meeting is adjourned. It's suspended. It's suspended. Just when some people are asking which clusters are those, so I will tell you the secret. Cluster one would be UCM annex one, paragraph six, seven, seven B's and eight, annex two, OP paragraph two, paragraph 2A and paragraph 2B. That's cluster one. Cluster two, CBMs, annex one, paragraph 14. Cluster three, verification, annex one, paragraphs 16, 17, 18, 18a, 18b, 18c, 18d, 21 and 22. Cluster 4, ICA, TF, Annex 2, Appendix 2, paragraph and Appendix 3, paragraph 10, 10a, bs, 10b, bs. Cluster five, science and technology, annex three, appendix one, paragraph 3b, paragraph six, paragraph nine, paragraph 14, paragraph 25, paragraph 26, paragraph 27, paragraph 29, paragraph 39, appendix two, rule 3.2. So those are the clusters. And we approached some delegations to be facilitators. And you have all the morning to produce something and come to me in the afternoon with all the solutions. Thank you.