… At the outset, I’d like to say that answers to some of the questions have already been included in, or covered by, the statement made by the delegation of Algeria earlier this morning. But as part of our interactive debate, I would like to highlight some elements related to the questions that you are putting to us. Now on the chapeau of the first question, if we refer here to [AWS], that are in fact, semi- or partially autonomous, we believe that the question of the use of the term of use is fine, but if we talk about fully autonomous weapon system, we need to add some additional adjectives after the word use or even before the use and talk about the design, development and employment of [AWS], keeping in mind that we are talking about fully autonomous weapon system. Now the answer to the question is very simple, and I support it was said by previous delegations to say that a legal review is relevant, it is necessary, but is not sufficient, when we talk about LAWS. Now on the chapeau of the second part, related to the perceptions states may have or may deem to be illegal under international law. And to these three questions, I will answer with one statement. It is the need to codify things, to unify our understanding, but also unify our obligations under a unified legal framework, that will include very important legal characteristics that eventually will then be transposed into the national legal order of countries so that we can deal with this issue in a unified manner. And I’ll provide you with an example, a general example, that relates to intellectual property. And, in that case, I believe that there are situations where countries with different jurisprudence related to situations of, for example, patents could be issued for machines that a machine builds, or is it the person [who] designed the machine to receive the patent for a machine that creates other machines? And the jurisprudence in countries is different: some countries believe that it is the machine that is covered by the patent, but in other countries, it is the individual that designed the original machine. So this is indeed not something that relates to the military sphere. But this could be example of how legal human responsibility is viewed. Now, looking at the third part of your questions, here, we might look, not just [at] a definition, but also add characteristics. But also we should remember that there is a lack of a operational and legal framework, something that the GGE should be working on. So the elaboration of an operational and normative framework will indeed be something that will bring greater clarity and even facilitate legal reviews of systems that eventually may appear in the future. So any anticipation of such developments should be based on general criteria and understandings that would be developed during the work of this group. …
Statement by Algeria under agenda item 5, topic 5 (9 March 2023, transcript)
