Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

More WILPF Material from the BioWeapons Conference

Several WILPFers are observing the Sixth Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention. US WILPFer Joan Ecklein, from the Boston branch, joined Carol in Geneva to do a presentation on the Boston activist community's response to the National Biocontainment Laboratory planned for Boston University. WILPF Boston has been at the forefront of the effort to stop the building of this dangerous lab. The presentation was held yesterday, based on a paper written by Joan and Claire Gosselin, Boston branch co-chair. The paper is available on the WILPF international website as a pdf file.

Our Geneva-based Disarmament team, Beatrice Fihn and Katherine Harrison, wrote an official report on the first week of the conference available at wilpf.int.ch.

1 Comments:

  • I am very pleased that Joan Ecklein, on behalf of WILPF Boston, was able to present what is going on in our city -- it points out the importance of the BWC and the need to strengthen its implementation.

    We worked hard on the paper, but I did find an error that I thought substantive enough to need correction.

    On page 5, paragraph 5 of the pdf file: in reference to the open letter to Zerhouni, it reads: "The letter stated the funding for biodefense related research grants has increased 1500% since 2001 while funds for public health grants research has decreased 41%." It should state that the number of grants (not the same as funds) have increased 1500%, and that certain nondefense oriented research grants have decreased by approx. 68%. (41% and 27%) The appendix to the open letter explains this more thoroughly.

    Apologies for the error.

    Claire Gosselin, Co Author.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:36 PM  

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