Scott Spence, Programme Director for National Implementation at VERTIC, assisted officials from a number of Jamaican ministries and agencies to address policy and technical matters on a draft bill to implement the Biological Weapons Convention, Chemical Weapons Convention and strategic trade controls thereto.
Scott Spence, Programme Director for National Implementation at VERTIC, assisted officials from a number of Jamaican ministries and agencies to address policy and technical matters on a draft bill to implement the Biological Weapons Convention, Chemical Weapons Convention and strategic trade controls thereto.
The two-part workshop, which ran from 23-26 October in Kingston, first focused on a line by line review – with Mr Spence and officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Legal Unit, Ministry of Health, Customs, Ministry of Science and Technology, CARICOM, the Office of Legal Reform and the Office of National Security – of an initial draft of the law prepared by Mr Spence and Mr Mike Beck, formerly of CITS, in November 2016.
A smaller group of participants, along with Mr Spence, then revised and refined the draft bill incorporating preliminary feedback from stakeholders prior to the workshop as well as the previous three days’ policy and technical inputs in order to advance the bill towards ultimate consideration by Parliament.
Mr Spence’s participation in this workshop in Jamaica was part of a project being carried out by VERTIC’s NIM Programme in co-operation with the Stimson Center, and funded by the Global Partnership Program of Global Affairs Canada, “Legislative Implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1540 in Latin America and the Caribbean – Phase II (2017-2018)”.
For more about VERTIC’s NIM Programme, click here.