Topic: 2024-Indiscriminate Weapons
Country: Philippines
Delegate Name: Dominik Barrett
The use of indiscriminate weapons such as landmines, cluster munitions, and chemical agents pose a significant threat to worldwide peace and security. These weapons often create extensive and long-lasting harm on non-combatant populations.In The Philippines it is currently illegal to use these weapons, yet there are still many left over from previous wars. Although, America has helped us to retrieve many of them, it is nearly impossible to find out how many more there are.
The Philippines has been a location for many previous wars such as World War II, Indochinese war, and the Vietnam War. This means that there are still an unknown amount of unidentified explosive objects (UXOs). In any explosions from 1979-2013 that happened in the Philippines, they were mostly caused by these UXOs (JMU Scholarly). These UXOs are largely made out of metal and are supposed to be searched for with metal detectors. However, these can be missed due to malfunctions or how old the UXOs are. The Philippines would like to work with other UN member nations to send or create a NGO agency that has access to military-grade metal detection to all well-known battle-torn areas to keep them safe for civilian living.
The Philippines has already been working with nations like the United States to remove 4,397 indiscriminate weapons since 2011. The Philippines also worked on the UN Secretary General report on Resolution 78/241. The Philippines look favorably on continuing to work on this paper in committee. The Philippines would like to provide a space to discuss and consider the implications of the use of autonomy in weapons systems from the point of view of the indo-Pacific region, meaningful human control, applicability of international law, ethical considerations, other military applications of artificial intelligence, and strategic trade regulations.
Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) are weaponized human controlled robots that go into spaces where they’re not safe for humans to be in. As the delegate of the Philippines we acknowledge that we have history with this topic at hand when we voted pro for the UN General Assembly resolution 78/241 to pass it in December 2023. One of the lines in the resolution we strongly support is to“help to better protect civilians in certain circumstances”. We the Philippines support LAWS because we think civilian safety is the first priority. We accomplish this goal by putting LAWS in human places in raid situations. We the Philippines personally do not use Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems. But with the understanding the more advanced tech is being developed we will consider adapting Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems in the future.
Sources Used
6th Conference of the High Contracting Parties to Protocol v on Explosive Remnants of War. UN Office of Disarmament Affairs, 2011.
General Assembly. 78/241 Lethal Weapons Autonomous Systems. UN General Assembly, 22 Dec. 2023.
INPUTS from the PHILIPPINES: Resolution 78/241. UN Secretary General Report .
willi4bm. “Empowering Host Nation Counter~IED and Counter~Insurgency Efforts: Innovative Application of Ordnance Recycling.” Www.jmu.edu, www.jmu.edu/news/cisr/2023/10/273/02-273-banach.shtml.
