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As the upcoming Global Partnership presidency approaches, Italy is going to trace a path to improve Members’ common understanding of well-known and emerging challenges in the CBRNe domain. Our presidency’s trait will encompass keeping solid links with global scientific community, civil society, and industry. We intend to capitalize on the Group’s unique capacity to combine political drive with programming to the benefit of science, security, and development.

First, we put a focus on biosecurity: it is paramount to uphold the universalization and full implementation of the BWC and provide the ongoing review process with concrete proposals for the Convention’s evolution and reinforcement. It remains crucial to keep investing in scientific research, expand our scientific community’s capacity to identify and study pathogens, contain and respond to new or re-emerging outbreaks, and address biorisk at all levels. On this horizon, we will pay special attention to the African continent: providing renewed momentum to the SIMBA initiative to address emerging and ongoing biothreats by building capacities will be of outmost importance to our presidency.

Second, witnessing the huge impact of major adverse climate changes and natural disasters associated with the accidental release of chemical material, we intend to increase awareness on chemical safety and security at all levels. In this effort, we envisage a special focus on enhancing preparedness for the next decades to face the increased risks of chemical events. The urgency to enhance predictability of such events and forge proper disaster risk management connects to a deeper understanding and proper regulation of Emerging and Disruptive Technologies – from AI to quantum computing; from additive manufacturing to genome editing –, which we identify as the third crosscutting priority for next year. If technology runs ahead of legislation, it is nevertheless crucial to leverage EDTs’ immense potential in a framework of responsible behaviour.

Fourth, and building on the huge experience of the Italian judiciary, financial intelligence units, and law enforcement agencies, Italy intends to renew a strong commitment on counter-proliferation financing, focusing this priority on the threat posed by countries that continue to successfully procure funds for their nuclear and ballistic missile programs through a variety of illicit activity and sanction evasions schemes.

Finally, as we look at the root cause of mistrust, hate speech, and propaganda, we wish to identify contrast to disinformation as the last priority for next year, inasmuch as it can affect public policy responses.

Across most of the abovementioned subjects, we will devote a special attention on Ukraine, aiming at exploring and tackling cross-cutting impact of the illegal, unjustified, and unprovoked war of aggression triggered by the Russian Federation on the whole CBRNe spectrum. Above all, throughout 2024 we will increase efforts to ensure increased understanding of common security challenges worldwide, grounded on a solid security culture, and fuel trust in science and scientist as the only tool to greater democracy and greater freedom for future generations.

We will measure our presidency’s success by the extent to which we are able to ensure inclusivity, build bridges of dialogue, and further empower our scientific community.