Episode Summary

In this episode, the Article 36 team discusses the second Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) meeting on autonomous weapons of 2023, which concluded on Saturday, 20th May. At the request of Russia, this meeting saw the exclusion of civil society and observers from the final negotiation of its report – a report that was predictably uninspiring. Richard Moyes, who attended the meeting in Geneva, provides a summary of the content of the report, and highlights that it fails to reflect the real momentum and energy we have already seen in 2023 towards a legal instrument on autonomous weapons.