Synopsis of Biological Safety and Security Arrangements

Abstract

This Synopsis provides summaries of key international treaties, agreements, instruments, guidelines, multilateral engagement mechanisms, and information resources intended to guide each individual nation’s approach to biosafety in research, clinical, and industrial laboratories. It summarizes the benefits and limitations of each in promoting biosafety, and their individual contributions towards minimizing the global risk and consequences of laboratory accidents. Though the compilation of these arrangements, we have determined that there is an extensive array of existent governmental mechanisms related to biosafety. However, this work also exposed a major gap in international biosafety coverage related to the potential for high-consequence accidents: there remains a need for international norms for the biosafety and governance of those pathogens that have increased potential to spark a pandemic.