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CCW Report, Vol. 9, No. 2

Editorial: Drawing bold moral lines against autonomy in weapon systems
2 August 2021


By Richard Moyes | Campaign to Stop Killer Robots

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The UN Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) returns to formal work in August on the issue of autonomous weapons. With the Sixth Review Conference (RevCon) of the CCW scheduled for the end of this year, and some significant developments in the international policy conversation already in 2021, states in August will be looking to position themselves in relation to the content of the issue and the political questions around “outcomes” from the RevCon. For civil society in the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, policy content continues to be key as we build recognition of the need for both prohibitions and regulations in response to the challenges of autonomy in weapon systems. These will provide the basis for a future legal instrument that protects human dignity and preserves meaningful human control in the use of force.

The Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) will meet from 3–13 August, with Ambassador Pecsteen of Belgium chairing discussions. Previous sessions of this GGE have been disrupted by COVID and by disagreements over meeting arrangements in the context of COVID. This has resulted in the status of certain sessions being disputed, and in the undertaking of informal online discussions to keep the conversation moving. The August session will see a return to formal, in-person, work—without the capacity for remote interventions and with constraints on room numbers that threaten to constrict civil society access. The meeting agenda is split broadly into two parts: first, discussions on content, and then consideration of how the GGE reports on its work. The latter is an open space for political arguments reflecting the ambitions of different constituencies for the RevCon.

Informal, online discussions held during the last week of June present an important backdrop to the first part of this session. Conducted without a formal agenda, the June discussions allowed states to express positions on how to approach the content of the issue as a whole. The most striking feature evident in June was the emergence of a structural coherence across the policy positions of many states and reflected in a number of joint papers. Although differing on the status of response needed (i.e. legal instrument vs. best practices) and on the choice and description of certain boundaries, there is clear movement towards a two-tier structure of prohibitions and regulations, which recognises that some things are unacceptable and other things need to be subject to positive obligations for control.

The centrality of this structure now, which reflects also the structure of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)’s recently announced position, has profound implications for the conversation ahead. It allows people to talk productively in a way that has been difficult to this point and is forcing states to position themselves more distinctly within the content. The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots calls for:

  • Prohibitions on autonomous weapon systems that cannot be used with meaningful human control;
  • Prohibitions on autonomous weapon systems that would target human beings;
    and
  • Positive obligations to ensure that meaningful human control is maintained over all other autonomous weapon systems.

We will be working to grow further the partnership of states and other actors that are working within this structure. We have strong arguments for why these components are necessary in response to the threat of dehumanisation, the erosion on legal protections, and risks unpredictable harms. Those arguments will provide the basis for a partnership of states, international organisations, and civil society to put in place the legal response that is necessary on this issue.

In opposition to that partnership, we are likely to see increasingly frantic efforts to secure something that can be claimed as an “outcome” on this issue at the RevCon, in order to bolster assertions that the CCW can be expected to provide an effective long-term solution. But asserting that “the CCW is the appropriate forum” and actually securing a meaningful outcome are very different things.

The implications of autonomy in weapon systems for society are profound and they will be generally recognised, sooner rather than later, as requiring a substantive legal response. We need multilateral processes that are adequate to solving pressing issues of technology in society, and we need to build greater confidence in norms and standards that protect our shared humanity. Amongst the structure of rules that the Campaign promotes, the rejection of allowing machines to kill people draws the clearest moral line. It is an invitation for states to be bold in setting the norms of our relationship to technology in the future. It is at that level of societal vision that states should approach the content of this discussion, with confidence that such content will find appropriate legal expression.

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