Individual Criminal Responsibility for War Crimes Resulting from the Use of Autonomous Weapons Systems
2020
Abstract
Autonomous weapons systems (AWS) are one of the emerging modern military technologies that are attracting more and more attention of the international community. While they raise a lot of questions with respect to various fields of law, the biggest worry is that there will be no accountability for their wrongful use.
This article focuses on the individual criminal responsibility for war crimes committed with the use of AWS. Four modes of responsibility, which could be potentially applied to AWS-related war crimes, are considered in turn with the aim of ascertaining, whether the current rules of international criminal law provide sufficient basis to assign responsibility for these crimes.