Following up on the seminar Killer Robots: the future of war?, we continue our discussion on lethal autonomous weapons and the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.

Launched in April 2013, the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is an international coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGO's) working to ban fully autonomous weapons. Until one year ago no government had expressed any concern about fully autonomous weapons. In May 2014, a ban on the development of lethal autonomous weapons will be discussed at the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) meeting in Geneva.

The agreement by 117 nations to the CCW to begin formal discussions on this topic reflects the rapidly growing international awareness of and concern over the need for human control over the decision to select targets and engage force. In light of this development, and with the CCW meeting approaching, the topics for this breakfast meeting are:

  • What is the state of the Campaign?
  • Will this special session be a suitable arena to get negotiations on a ban started?
  • Is the CCW approach at all relevant with respect to prohibiting this type of weapon technology?
  • What is the Norwegian policy on the issue?

Panel:

  • Alexander Harang (Director, Fredslaget)
  • Christian Holmboe Ruge (Programme Director – Humanitarian Disarmament, ILPI)
  • Nicholas Marsh (Researcher, PRIO)
  • Simon O'Connor (Legal Adviser, Norwegian Red Cross)

Chair: Kristin Bergtora Sandvik (Senior Researcher, PRIO)

This breakfast seminar is organized by the Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies (NCHS), in collaboration with the PRIO Research Groups on Humanitarianism and Law and Ethics.