Our Advocacy at the CCW
“The InterAgency Institute calls on Member-States to demonstrate tangible progress from these ten years of negotiations, and take this first step as a preemptive measure, before it becomes impossible to do so” (Statement by The InterAgency Institute at the GGE on LAWS, Geneva, 15 May 2023).
The InterAgency Institute has been attending the CCW/GGE on LAWS since 2022. As part of the Stop Killer Robots campaign, we advocate for the prohibition and regulation of Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS), our advocacy currently seeks to identify emerging patterns and trends using data-driven insights.
1. GGE Discourse Database
- Results from CCW March 2024 Session:
We’ve built a Python algorithm to transform raw transcripts from the CCW/GGE on LAWS into an organized spreadsheet. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP), a subfield of AI, and regular expressions (regex), we have turned the speaker list into a column and separated individual statements, generating organized CSV files for each session of the March GGE.
With the organized spreadsheets we have generated data-driven insights on participation, inclusion, and other aspects of the forum. We hope this can amplify the views and understanding of the discussions under course.
Full technical explanation of the factsheet available here.
- Results from CCW August 2024 Session:
Continuing the use of the tool developed as above reported, the IA team provided a daily newsletter summarizing the insights derived from each session’s database analysis. A consolidated version of these newsletters, including additional trend analysis, is available to interested parties one week after the conclusion of the CCW meetings. Our goal is to enhance the visibility of both individual and collective actions during the sessions, support subgroup analyses, identify trends and synergies, and inform stakeholders about potential engagement opportunities and pathways toward agreement.
If you want to receive this newsletter dedicated to trends of the sessions, sign it up here.
Interested in taking it further? If you’re interested in using the dataset for your project, reach out to globalsecurity@interagency.institute
2. Autonomous Weapons Bingo
Listening to GGE meetings can be tedious. Statements often drag on, and it can be hard to stay engaged. This project aims to make this week’s sessions a bit more engaging and encourage delegations to listen actively.
We’ve created a bingo game with expressions that were among the 50 most repeated in statements during the last meeting containing one of the keywords: ethics, accountability, human control, IHL, and legally binding instrument.
We’ve used the developed tool based on R and Python to filter statements with specific keywords and identified the most common expressions, ranging from 2 to 7 words. For a detailed technical explanation, click here.
Interested parties have listened to the discourses during the sessions and marked off phrases they hear that match those on their bingo card. If they get bingo, they could share it on their stories and tag @interagency.institute and @stopkillerrobots.
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