Map of parties to the Biological Weapons Convention 

This map serves as a visual guide of various countries' official status as to the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972. States that have signed and ratified or acceded to the convention have agreed not to produce biological weapons and other toxins. (Whether individual states have actually lived up to their signatory status is not addressed in this map.)

Dark green countries are original signatories to the convention whose local governments then ratified it. Lighter green countries either acceded (joined later) or succeeded its status from another government (as in the breakup of Yugoslavia, for example). Orange countries signed the original convention but did not ratify it locally, while red countries neither originally signed nor have acceded later. Non-states or states for which there is no data available are not colored.

Signature and deposit dates are listed for each country, for submission to London (L), Moscow (M), and Washington (W).

Note: The available map geometry does not include South Sudan, which just became an independent state in 2011. South Sudan has not acceded to the convention as of this writing, and should appear red on the map.

This map was created by FAS using data provided by the United Nations and map geometry provided by Thematic Maps.

The data underlying this map is freely available on Google Fusion Tables.