Topic: Autonomous Weapon Systems
Country: Russia
Delegate Name: Emma McNorton
School: Royal Oak High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Russia position papers GLIMUN 2015 committees
Russia would like to begin by stating that any use of autonomous weapon systems must be in accordance with international humanitarian law and international human rights. The question of the morality of autonomous weapons has been debated by many nations in the past decade, we believe that agreement in this statement will provide added harmony to this committee.
When these weapons are being developed it is imperative that the nations are taking into the account the legality of their technology as viewed by the international community. There is a certain amount of trust we must provide our sovereign nations, and Russia believes to build on this trust, transparency between nations’ development in this area of technology would provide another layer of accountability. From this transparency, when there is evidence that a nation has actively violated international humanitarian law in wartime, or human rights law in an internal peacetime incident, we as an international community must respond with action. One point of contention is who to charge with the illegal use of these weapons. For autonomous weapons there are three categories: semi-autonomous, supervised autonomous, and fully autonomous, and as these weapons become more and more independent the direct responsibility some say becomes more muddled. However, Russia believes that proper investigation will yield what human being, if any is directly responsible. We must take these investigations on a case by case basis, and not use this committee’s precious time to focus on specific instances. We must rather decide what standard we want to hold our nations to.
Russia believes that the use of these weapons is ethically justifiable as long as they do not violate standards already agreed upon by the international community. A nation can use whichever method of weapon providing that they are in the situations set parameters. Countries should be able to explore this technology. We as a world must continue to be innovative and also compassionate, and if these weapons could in turn reduce the total amount of casualties then Russia sees no need to place impediments. Russia looks forward to taking this leap of innovation with all other nations during in this committee and working towards an innovative compassionate future.
