On 22 and 23 October, the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt hosted an interdisciplinary conference on behalf of CBWNet on norm contestation and compliance in the CBW prohibition regimes. The conference welcomed experts from the fields of law and political science, as well as practitioners in the areas of concern.

On the first day of the conference, Dr. Detlef Männig gave a presentation on historical norm contestation and the use of chemical weapons in the 20th century. He discussed three cases of violations of the non-use norm. The second presentation by Dr. Alexander Kelle analysed variations in authoritarian norm contestation, using Russia’s contestation of the investigation norm in relation to CW use in Syria as a case study.

The second day kicked off with presentation by Bruno Cevallos, raising the question of whether the emergence of biologically derived riot-control agents such as Skunk reveals critical gaps in the CBW prohibition regimes. This was followed by presentations on violation and enforcement of CW norms. In this context Dr. Ralf Trapp focused on investigations of chemical weapons use in Syria, followed by a presentation by Dr. Barry de Vries on the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine.

The final panel featured presentations by Almuntaser Albalawi, who spoke about conceptual considerations related to compliance with the norms against CBW and Veronika Klymova, who discussed compliance with CBW norms from the perspective of moral psychology. Finally, Dr. Una Jakob presented her research on restoring compliance with CBW norms in the context of changing state identity, such as in the case of Syria.

The contributions to this conference will be published by CBWNet in an edited volume.