Week Ahead at the UN

LAWS: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems and International Humanitarian Law, Human Rights Day, Violent Video Games and Terrorism, End Violence Against Women Campaign, WHO Aims to Ban Trans Fat

LAWS: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems and International Humanitarian Law

This coming week will see the continuation of the negotiations and the production of the final report by the Governmental Group of Experts, (GGE), on the implications of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS), its possible harms to civilians and critical infrastructure in armed conflict, and other potential threats to warfare as it relays on automation with little or no human supervision.

This happens under the auspices of the United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs and based on the framework provided by the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, in preparation to its upcoming meeting from the 13 to 17 December in Geneva.

The Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects as amended on 21 December 2001, usually referred to as the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons or CCW, is also known as the Inhumane Weapons Convention.

The purpose of the Convention is to ban or restrict the use of specific types of weapons that are considered to cause unnecessary or unjustifiable suffering to combatants or to affect civilians indiscriminately.

Source: United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs ODA

This year’s discussions of the GGE are focusing on emerging technologies in the area of LAWS and whether international humanitarian law is sufficient to regulate its uses, human-machine interaction in the deployment of such emerging technology, UN country-members will also make a review of military applications and other humanitarian and international security challenges posed by the uses of precision technologies in warfare.