2025 Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems
Second Session (Geneva, 1–5 September 2025)
Asia-Pacific Institute for Law and Security
Thank you, chair!
We think that in Box II, paragraphs 1–3 appropriately reflect principles derived from the existing law and earlier consensus views of the Group.
We also support the way in which the Martens Clause has been retained in paragraph 4.
Paragraph 5 reflects, of course, the critical points that legal compliance in the use of LAWS requires some kind of human-machine interaction. To capture that interaction, it introduces the concept of “context-appropriate human judgement and control”, which is later reflected in Box III, paragraph 6, and Box IV, paragraph 2.
We believe it is helpful to think here, as a number of delegations have done, about the relationship between these parts of the rolling text. On our reading, paragraph 5 here reflects the objective of context-appropriate human judgement and control—namely, ensuring legal compliance. Box III, paragraph 6, on the other hand, outlines the practical measures for ensuring such judgement and control. Seen this way, the concept of “context-appropriate human judgement and control” serves as a linkage between compliance with the law on the one hand and the various practical measures on the other hand. With that in mind, we also support retaining the language here, or in a separate box as proposed by the Ukrainian delegation.
Concerns have been expressed about the redundancy of referring to both control and judgment, and the relationship between these two concepts. That relationship could perhaps be addressed by slight tweaks in the language. For example, the phrases “control based on context-appropriate human judgment” or “control informed by context-appropriate human judgment” might be options in this regard.
I thank you, Chair!
