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This paper addresses how international humanitarian law (IHL) requires human control over lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) and how that requirement can be made operational. Using a doctrinal methodology, it distills the applicable IHL rules, i.e. distinction, proportionality, the prohibition of unnecessary suffering, and the duty of precautions in attack, and shows that compliance presupposes human judgment in planning, authorizing, supervising, and, where necessary, canceling attacks. It explains the normative role of human control in enabling attribution and liability across the weapon life cycle, using Moor’s taxonomy only to clarify that responsibility remains with identifiable human actors irrespective of system sophistication. The paper then examines meaningful human control as a policy formulation and identifies capability and governance obstacles that hinder its implementation. If not implemented, there is a risk of non-compliance with IHL. To prevent such scenario, the paper argues that socio-technical standards can function as Informal IHL to specify verifiable requirements for control. Integrated into weapons reviews, procurement, doctrine, and training, such standards provide a feasible path to determine, evidence, and verify compliance without altering underlying law.
Khadija et al. (Wed,) studied this question.