Explosive weapons in populated areas: looking ahead to 2020

Laura Boillot This post was originally published in the Forum on the Arms Trade ‘Looking Ahead’ series here. After a decade of work building concern over the use of explosive weapons in towns, cities and other populated areas, an ambitious timeframe has now been set out for developing an international political declaration in the first half of 2020. The aim of the initiative is to develop a tool to tackle the high levels of civilian... Read more

Effects of explosive weapons: working paper for consultations on a political dec...

As the process develops to conclude in 2020 an international political declaration through which states will make commitments to better protect civilians from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, Article 36 submitted the following working paper to the consultations on the declaration text, which argues that a central function of a political declaration should be to recognise that the physical/technical characteristics of explosive weapons need to be factored into military decision making in... Read more

An empty spectacle? On the order of deliberations in the Meeting of the High Con...

Alexander Holder In recent years I have been fortunate enough to spend a considerable amount of time observing the interactions that take place at some of the United Nation’s major deliberative forums. Last month, I spent several days observing the negotiations that constitute the Meeting of the High Contracting Parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), and having returned home I have found myself pre-occupied with what appears to be a contradictory element... Read more

A structure for regulating ‘autonomy’ in weapons systems

In a short paper, Article 36 outlines a structure for the regulation of weapons that use sensors and target profiles as a basis for determining when and where force should be applied.  This structure frames the issues of concern within a broad outer category.  Within that broad category, we argue that certain types of system-functioning should be prohibited. The remainder should be subject to positive obligations, in order to preserve a meaningful form of human... Read more