Project lead: Paola Gaeta, Professor, International Law

Timeline: July 2018 - June 2022
Keywords: international criminal law; international humanitarian law; individual criminal responsibility for war crimes; autonomous weapons systems; war crimes; methods of warfare
Funding Organisation: Swiss National Science Foundation

The LAWS & War Crimes project analyses the challenges of ascribing criminal responsibility for war crimes raised by the advent of increasingly autonomous weapon systems and human-machine shared decision-making in the targeting process (so-called mixed-initiative systems). 

In particular, the project focusses on the criminal responsibility of the user of autonomous weapons and of the human-operator in mixed systems. It is in this area that the risk of a responsibility gap is greatest. It is likely that the criminal intent required for the commission of war crimes in combat operations is lacking. At the same time, it is also likely that the causal connection between the human conduct and the harmful and wrongful result is missing.

The LAWS & War Crimes project seeks to understand this gap, both at the international and domestic level, and identify ways to resolve it.

The project team consists of an international team of researchers based at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva and is supported by a four-year grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. More information can be found on the website of the LAWS and War Crimes project”.

Conference papers and presentations

• Abhimanyu George Jain, ‘LAWS in International Law’, Asser Institut Research Seminars, 6 May 2021
• Marta Bo, ‘Failure to Stop and Responsibility by Omission for War Crimes Committed with Autonomous Weapons’, 'AI and Normative Challenges: International and Comparative Legal Perspectives' conference organised by the European Society of International Law and the Kalliopi Koufa Foundation at the University of Thessaloniki, 2 April 2021 
• Marta Bo, ‘Signature Strikes and the “Personalization of war” in and beyond Counter-Terrorism:  Accountability Problems’, workshop on ‘Big Data in the Counter-Terrorism Context: Uses and Boundaries’, ICCT and Asser Institut, 26 January 2021
• Abhimanyu George Jain, ‘Subjects and Politics in Civil Society’s Turn to AI’, expert workshop on ‘Artificial Intelligence and Civil Society Participation in Policy-Making Processes’, University of Geneva, 10 December 2020
• Marta Bo, ‘Autonomy in Weapons and Targeting: the Responsibility Gap in the ICC Statute in light of the Mens Rea of the War Crime of Attacking Civilians’, Asser Institut Research Seminars, 28 October 2020 
• Abhimanyu George Jain, ‘Autonomous Cyber Capabilities and Individual Criminal Responsibility for War Crimes', NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence conference on ‘Autonomous Cyber Capabilities and International Law’, 28 September 2020 
• Marta Bo, ‘Inteligencia artificial, selección de objetivos militares (targeting) y ataques indiscriminados contra la población civil‘, Faculty of Law, University of Buenos Aires, 2 July 2020 
• Marta Bo, ‘Sistemas Letales de Armas Autónomas y Elemento Subjetivo de los Crímenes de Guerra’ Facultad de Derecho, Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires, 30 April 2020 
• Abhimanyu George Jain invited to serve as discussant for session on ‘Intersections of Storytelling and Making: Present Futures of Gender, AI and Robots’ at workshop on ‘Diffracting AI and Robotics: Decolonial and Feminist Perspectives’, Goethe University, 12 October 2019
• Marta Bo: ‘The Human-Weapon Relationship in the Age of Autonomous Weapons and the Attribution of Criminal Responsibility for War Crimes’, WeRobot 2019 conference, University of Miami School of Law, 12 April 2019
• Marta Bo, ‘Responsibility for War Crimes and Culpability Theories in the Age of Autonomous Weapons’, 8th Annual Cambridge International Law Conference, University of Cambridge, 20 March 2019
• Marta Bo and Abhimanyu George Jain, ‘Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems and Individual Criminal Responsibility’, Asser Institute Winter Academy 2019, 14 February 2019.
   

News 

• Victoria Priori, ‘Artificial Intelligence, a Technology in Need of Answers’, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, 12 January 2021 
• Paola Gaeta, ‘Violence, Killer Robots and Regulation’, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, 16 May 2019
• Paola Gaeta, ‘Robots and Criminal Responsibility’, The Globe, The Graduate Institute Review (2018), no. 22, p. 12
• Marta Bo, ‘Who is Criminally Responsible for the Commission of War Crimes When Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems are Deployed in Armed Conflicts’, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, 21 September 2018 
• Article concerning Paola Gaeta’s public lecture on ‘Killer robots in the battlefield and the alleged accountability gap for war crimes’ (given at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies on 10 April 2018), Digital Watch, 17 April 2018.