{"id":13832,"date":"2025-11-06T16:57:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T16:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/2025\/11\/06\/advancing-biological-security-policy-action\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T16:57:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T16:57:13","slug":"advancing-biological-security-policy-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/2025\/11\/06\/advancing-biological-security-policy-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Advancing Biological Security Through Policy Action"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Centre for Aerospace and Security Studies<\/strong> Lahore convened a focused roundtable on 5 November 2025 to discuss biological risks, global conventions and Pakistan&#8217;s options, drawing academics, domain experts and practitioners to examine national preparedness and policy responses.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ms Ezba Walayat Khan<\/strong, Research Assistant at CASS Lahore, opened the session and set the tone for an evidence driven discussion on biosafety, biosecurity and the evolving challenges posed by modern biotechnology.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Prof Dr Syed Javaid Khurshid<\/strong delivered a two part presentation that traced the evolution of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and stressed how the absence of a formal verification mechanism undermines confidence and enables non compliance. He highlighted the dual use dilemma where advances in life sciences can be repurposed for harm and used the COVID 19 pandemic to illustrate the difficulty in distinguishing natural outbreaks from deliberate incidents.<\/p>\n<p>In his second session Dr Khurshid urged concrete confidence building measures to strengthen detection and response capacities at national, regional and international levels, and recommended education programmes to raise awareness across scientific and regulatory communities. He noted the renewed attention on biological concerns following the Russia Ukraine conflict and commended Pakistan&#8217;s legal framework including the BWC Act, Export Control Laws and the Biosafety Rules 2005 as important foundations for national biological security.<\/p>\n<p>Key recommendations included establishing a vaccine bank, expanding local production of essential vaccines and exploring Pakistan&#8217;s inclusion in export control regimes such as the Australia Group and the Wassenaar Arrangement to align with international norms while safeguarding national interests. These measures were framed as practical steps to bolster preparedness and supply chain resilience for public health emergencies.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Air Marshal Asim Suleiman Retd<\/strong, President CASS Lahore, observed that the rapidly changing security landscape demands stronger global and national responses to accidental releases, potential weaponisation and weak international oversight. He called for ethical innovation and balanced diplomacy to enhance resilience and promote equitable global preparedness as part of Pakistan's contribution to collective biological security.<\/p>\n<p>The roundtable concluded with an engaged interactive session in which participants highlighted Pakistan&#8217;s ongoing BWC engagement, identified biosafety challenges and urged development of a stronger biotechnology and pharmaceutical base for national health security. Attendees praised CASS Lahore for convening an informed discussion that linked policy options with practical steps to advance biological security in Pakistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CASS Lahore roundtable urges Pakistan to advance biological security with vaccine banks, local production, export controls and stronger detection capacities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":13831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pakistan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}