CCW Report, Vol. 9, No. 10
Editorial: Advancing work against weapons at the CCW Review Conference
14 December 2021
Ray Acheson | Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
As the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) Review Conference meets this week in Geneva, people around the world are watching to see if governments can live up to the expectations of the global majority and agree not to unleash a dystopian future upon all of humanity. It’s unusual for the CCW to be the subject of such scrutiny, but as public awareness around the development of artificial intelligence and algorithms grows, increasing numbers of people are worried about autonomy in weapon systems.
On the opening day of the Review Conference, Stop Killer Robots and Amnesty International delivered their global petition to the President of the CCW, Ambassador Yann Hwang of France. 17,000+ people are calling on their governments to launch negotiations for new international law on autonomous weapon systems (AWS). These numbers are continuing to grow. Yet as the failure last week of the CCW’s Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on AWS to adopt recommendations for the Review Conference demonstrated, a handful of militarised states continue to block meaningful progress toward concrete, legally binding prohibitions and restrictions that could safeguard humanity from autonomous violence.
This is, of course, not the only issue on the CCW’s agenda this week. High contracting parties and other participants are also deliberating on the Convention’s work on mines, improvised explosive devices, explosive remnants of war, the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, incendiary weapons, and more. On almost all of these issues, the majority of states have expressed concern with the grave humanitarian impacts caused by these weapons and yet have been prevented, time and again, from updating the relevant protocols or adopting new rules and regulations to protect human beings.
The CCW was created to be a dynamic treaty responding to a changing international security environment, weapons development, and public opinion about what is reasonable for civilians and combatants to endure in conflict, argued New Zealand. It cannot be a forum that initiates, and then cannot conclude, discussions on the most pressing issues related to weapons use and development. In this same context, Mexico argued that the broad protection of persons against the use of weapons stands above any “legitimate” military goal. CCW high contracting parties must work to develop new standards to address new challenges.
But as Panama pointed out, a minority of states are focused more on their arms race than on diplomacy and multilateralism. For most countries, it noted, strength is found not in weapons, but in disarmament and international law. This is the approach that must be taken by all those committed to the principles and objectives of the CCW.
To this end, high contracting parties must this week, among other things: agree to negotiate a legally binding instrument containing prohibitions, restrictions, and regulations of AWS; commit to review and strengthen protocol III on incendiary weapons to close its loopholes, and to investigate and respond to uses of such weapons; and agree to discussions on mines other than antipersonnel mines, in order to address the humanitarian and environmental harms caused by the use of such weapons. They should also agree to incorporate gender perspectives—including analysis of gender norms and feminist approaches to weapons and war—in the work of the CCW and promote all forms of diversity in the work of the Convention. They should further enhance work on environmental considerations, including, as Panama suggested, studying the relationship between climate change and conventional weapons.
There are many other actions and activities the CCW can take up in the interests of protecting humanity from the scourge of war, preventing arms races, and ending the wasteful expenditure on weapons instead of well-being of people and planet. As reflected in this edition of the CCW Report, which focuses on the general exchange of views on 13 and 14 December, much work remains to be done. But this conference provides an opportunity for states to either advance work here or recognise that the work will need to be advanced elsewhere.
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