Export controls on chemicals and biological agents, agreed by consensus: the Australia Group

Background

The Australia Group is an informal arrangement through which governments coordinate export controls on items that could be used to make chemical or biological weapons. It grew out of the finding by United Nations investigators that chemical weapons had been used in the Iran-Iraq War. The United States and several other countries then began to control exports of chemicals that could be turned into chemical weapons, and Australia proposed that concerned countries meet to coordinate those controls and share information. The first meeting was held soon after, and the group's meetings continue at the Australian embassy in Paris. The group keeps a control list of chemicals and equipment, and biological agents and research and production equipment were added to that list as covert biological weapons programmes became a worry. Its guidelines do not forbid exporting listed items; they call for monitoring and licensing, with an export refused only where there is reason to suspect a contribution to a weapons programme, so lawful trade is not cut off. Later additions cover items not on the lists at all, eight further toxins, technology tied to dual-use biological equipment, and transfers of knowledge by telephone, fax or internet. The arrangement rests on no treaty and has no administrative structure of its own; it works entirely by consensus of its members, its outcomes are not binding, and a new member is taken in only by full consensus once it has shown compliance with the chemical and biological weapons conventions and an effective export control system of its own.