Episode Details

For almost eight years now, the international community at the United Nations (UN) has been discussing the various ethical, legal and security-related issues surrounding autonomy in weapons systems. The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) in Geneva is the focal point of this exchange. Since 2017, a CCW Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) has been busy deliberating the structure and content of a possible ‘normative and operational framework’ for regulation. In this post, Frank Sauer – a long-term observer and participant in the CCW process as well as the wider debate on weapon autonomy – examines the current state of the debate and charts a possible way forward for the discussion within the CCW framework.