First 2025 Session of the Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems
Thank you, Chair!
We appreciate your efforts to take us closer to a text that could meet consensus and the opportunity to comment on this revised version. As you requested, we’ll limit our comments to Box I for now.
The characterisation of LAWS in paragraph 1 is now qualified by the phrase “Within the scope of the application of the CCW”. The scope of application of a treaty, including the CCW, has multiple aspects—there is a substantive, personal, temporal and geographic scope of application.
The text of the CCW uses this concept in a particular way. Article 1 of the Convention is titled “scope of application” and that Article makes the CCW and its protocols applicable in armed conflict. In accordance with Amended Article 1, this encompasses international and non-international armed conflicts.
In light of this language of the Convention itself, paragraph 1 of the revised rolling text effectively means “in an armed conflict, a lethal autonomous weapon system can be characterised as” and so on.
Accordingly, the new language of paragraph 1 does not seem to connect the characterisation of LAWS to the objectives of the Convention. Nor does it confine this characterisation to the discussions occurring within the GGE. Yet this appears to be the motivation for this revision.
We would suggest replacing the phrase “Within the scope of the application of the CCW”.
In its place, one option would be to use the simple formulation “For the purposes of the CCW”. An alternative would be to use a phrase that has been used by the group before, namely “In the context of the objectives and purposes of the Convention”.
Turning now to paragraph 2, which contains an interesting proposal that could address the concerns of many delegations about the term “lethal”. But there seems to be a slight grammatical issue. The word “lethal” is an adjective, so it cannot itself mean a weapon. It can only characterise a weapon. Thus, the word “weapon” should be inserted after the word “lethal”. The paragraph would then read “For purposes of these elements of an instrument, lethal weapons mean weapons with the capacity to” and so on.
I thank you, chair!
