Global WMD Knowledge Proliferation Prevention and Human Engagement Programs Worldwide

Options for Universal Sustainable Scientists Engagement, Country Tailored Threat-Reduction efforts, and Return of Investments Mechanisms. Methodology and Outlines

October 24-25 2008
Council Room, Municipality of Como
Como, Italy

Organized by
International Working Group - Landau Network Centro Volta (IWG – LNCV), Como, Italy

With the support of

Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rome, Italy

Civilian Research & Development Foundation (CRDF), Washington DC, USA

International Science and Technology Centre (ISTC), Moscow, Russia

UK Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), London, UK

Municipality of Como, Italy

This two-working days IWG Meeting and Round Table had a very specific and concrete aim: exploring how the different stakeholders could use their expertise and experience to implement new and more efficient mechanisms to downscale intellectual proliferation risks. After a critical review of the human engagement/redirection/economic diversification efforts worked out in Russia/CIS, the exporting beyond the FSU of the knowledge and methods attained therein by the existing international and national assistance programs, in particular by the Science Centers, have been exploited. Areas of particular concern for the scope of this event were Central Asia (like Azerbaijan), Iraq and Libya – already touched by some of the above mentioned KPP programs – but also, in perspective, South Asia (like Pakistan) and North-East Asia (like the DPRK).

The meeting was organized in two-working days, with a plenary session in the first day addressing some of the “universal elements” of any sustainable scientist engagement/redirection program, and then with specific Country cases sessions during the second and last day.

The event discussed and explored possible sustainable strategies for defense-related scientists engagement, not limited only to Russia/CIS, that guarantee sustainability and non-proliferation effectiveness, and moreover analyzed the possibility to establish Science Centers in the “target States” as branches of (or new entities like) the ISTC and the STCU, with the aim also to facilitate the economic diversification and integration of these States in the international Science and Technology (S&T) community, as well as in the global market place.  Moreover, the workshop tried to outline new guidelines, as well as new methodologies, for this global cooperative engagement programs to maximize the RoI and the commercialization of the dual-use scientific knowledge of the target communities.