The Group of Governmental Experts on Emerging Technologies in the Area of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (GGE on LAWS) is an open-ended intergovernmental body of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), established by Decision 1 of the Convention's Fifth Review Conference (CCW/CONF.V/10). It works and adopts its reports by consensus and reports to the Convention's Review Conferences (Report of the 2024–2025–2026 Sessions of the CCW Group of Governmental Experts on LAWS (CCW/GGE.1/2026/3)).
Mandate
The 2023 Meeting of the High Contracting Parties directed the Group to "further consider and formulate, by consensus, a set of elements of an instrument, without prejudging its nature, and other possible measures to address emerging technologies in the area of lethal autonomous weapon systems," taking into account the Convention's existing Protocols, states' proposals and other options, "bringing in expertise on legal, military, and technological aspects," and to report to the Seventh Review Conference, "preferably before the end of 2025." The mandate provided for ten days of meetings a year and a chair from the Eastern European Group (Report of the 2024–2025–2026 Sessions of the CCW Group of Governmental Experts on LAWS (CCW/GGE.1/2026/3)).
Chair and secretariat
The Eastern European Group declined its turn, and the High Contracting Parties endorsed Robert in den Bosch, Permanent Representative of the Netherlands to the Conference on Disarmament, nominated by the Western European and Others Group, through a written silence procedure. Secretaries of the Group were drawn from the CCW Implementation Support Unit, with further secretariat staff from the Geneva Branch of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (Report of the 2024–2025–2026 Sessions of the CCW Group of Governmental Experts on LAWS (CCW/GGE.1/2026/3)).
Participation
The final report lists 102 High Contracting Parties, two signatory states and 15 non-party observer states as participants, together with the European Union, the ICRC, the IFRC, the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining, the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, more than 50 non-governmental organizations including Human Rights Watch, Stop Killer Robots and the Future of Life Institute, and academic institutions. Working papers came from states including the United States, the Russian Federation, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Japan, Egypt and Türkiye, from groups of European states and of Asia-Pacific and North American states, from the Chair, and from the ICRC (Report of the 2024–2025–2026 Sessions of the CCW Group of Governmental Experts on LAWS (CCW/GGE.1/2026/3)).
Work and output, 2024–2026
The Group met in Geneva for two five-day sessions in each of 2024, 2025 and 2026, with informal meetings between sessions. It kept a rolling text of provisionally agreed formulations (versions of 18 December 2025 and 5 June 2026 are published) (Source: meetings.unoda.org). On 4 September 2026 it adopted its final report, CCW/GGE.1/2026/3, containing the set of elements on LAWS (paras. 25–44) and recommending that the Seventh Review Conference (16–20 November 2026) consider and endorse them and decide on the Group's future work (Report of the 2024–2025–2026 Sessions of the CCW Group of Governmental Experts on LAWS (CCW/GGE.1/2026/3)). Reuters and Human Rights Watch place the agreement in the early hours of 5 September and describe the final text as weakened relative to earlier drafts, with the United States and Russia among the states seeking changes (Source: reuters.com; Source: hrw.org).
Relationships
- instance-of: Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) — subsidiary body of the Convention
- related: CCW GGE Set of Elements on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (2026) — its 2026 output
- related: Report of the 2024–2025–2026 Sessions of the CCW Group of Governmental Experts on LAWS (CCW/GGE.1/2026/3) — its final report
- related: Robert in den Bosch — chair; United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) — secretariat
- related: Autonomous Weapons