Rather than trying to prevent you asked him some more challenging questions, actually I want to remind us of the homework you presented this week last night. And I want to perhaps now take the opportunity to answer or provide a UK response to one of the questions that you posed us last night, and that is the one about could targeting parameters amounts to the fulfilment of the principle of distinction. So, the principle and exercise distinction requires the ability to observe, recognise and exercise situational judgement, and already makes it unlawful for combatants to target civilians, those combatants that are all to combat and medical personnel and padres. Additionally, the principle of proportionality requires the individual taking the decision to attack to appreciate the context and object of the attack. So, these already represent a type of targeting parameter or parameters. But as we pointed out during our intervention on legal reviews, who and what may be targeted, and when and how they may be targeted, are context specific and would need to be determined on a case-by-case basis. So in that sense, , the risk of answering the question with a question is, what type of targeting parameters would you be referring to in your question? And in addition to that, there is a danger that targeting parameters {that are too board} may result in difficulties in achieving distinction, especially if there is a temporal distance between the human involvement and the exercise of a situational judgement. So, the assurances that we have already, say, through verification and validation and review processes, those assurances that would gain confidence in the behaviour of a system become critical in allowing human decision-makers to incorporate that understanding into their decisions regarding the use of LAWS.
Statement by the United Kingdom under agenda item 5, topic 5 (9 March 2023, 2nd intervention, transcript)
