Reviews of new weapons systems in the context of rapid pace of technological advancement requires scientific and technical capacities that in connection with [AWS] will clearly show the gap in the positions of states when they analyse new technologies and their compliance with international law. Taking into account the existence of these gaps, my delegation believes that we need to create a comprehensive mechanism that will take into account such differences and provide for ways of resolving them. We do believe that to carry out legal reviews at the national level, will demonstrate that there’s a great gap between the capacities of developed countries that have the knowledge, for example, to deal with questions of machine learning, and those countries that purchase these weapons that will be somewhat limited to evaluate certain impacts of the use of such systems. So, we have to analyse the situations and we have to move towards a standardisation of legal review mechanism. Now, in terms of the Draft Protocol VI to the CCW presented by my country together with other countries during the 2022 session of the GGE has four sections related to the reviews of [AWS] that focuses on the need to guarantee transparency in terms of all aspects of the development of [LAWS] during the entire life-cycle of such systems, including national review process, taking into account the possibilities of self-learning of such systems. Also, Draft Protocol VI includes provisions related to the need for states to share on a voluntary basis information and best practices on the realisation of legal reviews of [AWS]. In particular, my delegation believes that exchange of information, best practices and lessons learned, as has been said by many delegations and also as reflected in the Draft Protocol, will represent a first step towards the standardisation of a review system that will help us reduce the gap that exists in capacities of states in carrying out legal reviews of weapon systems. Most importantly, we believe that it’ll be crucial to ensure that the bulk of the information that is exchanged will come from producing countries because indeed those are the countries that have the greatest amount of information on the functioning capacities and potential of such systems.
Argentina, Statement under agenda item 5, topic 5 (9 March 2023, transcript)
