By Claudia Pearson

With the third and hopefully final Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) informal experts meeting coming up in a couple days, it is important to remind ourselves of what was discussed last year and what work still needs to be done.

The gathering of the CCW member states and organisations in Geneva in April 2015 was designed as a forum at which states could discuss the important technical, legal, moral and ethical issues surrounding autonomous weapons, otherwise known as ‘killer robots’.

At the 2015 meetings, almost all states that spoke agreed that further work is necessary and desirable and many expressed that no autonomous weapons should be allowed to operate without meaningful human control. Nor with human control that is ‘devoid of meaning.’ There were however a small number of states who were more reserved regarding the eventual achievement of a pre-emptive ban on autonomous weapons. The US and Israel implied that they plan to leave the door open for the future acquisition of these weapons. While France and the UK stated that they would not pursue killer robots but still neither indicated support for the logical conclusion of a pre-emptive ban.

Another important notion that arose from the CCW 2015 meetings was the fact that autonomous weapons or killer robots are not an inevitable piece of weaponry and should never be allowed to become an inevitable piece of weaponry. This notion was a useful counterpoint to some interventions that seemed to under-estimate to value and importance of human soldiers.

Further, the CCW focused heavily on norm creation, with members emphasising the need to establish norms in order to efficiently discuss and articulate what is most disturbing and threatening about the possibility of autonomous weapons use. Once these norms are clearly established and accepted by a majority of states, hopefully there will be a more concerted effort to transform these norms into fully ratified international laws.

Finally, multiple countries and organisations identified the need to define what exactly some of the key terms commonly used at the conference meant. For example, what exactly is meant by ‘meaningful human control’? Further explorations of this principle could be a key component of a Group of Governmental Experts in 2017 leading to a process to prevent the use of fully autonomous weapons through law.

Hopefully, this year some more solid definitions can be agreed upon and a Group of Governmental Experts will be called for next year so the process of banning autonomous weapons through international law can be accelerated leading to a pre-emptive ban.

Claudia Pearson is an undergraduate student at the University of Leeds, currently studying abroad at the University of Ottawa.