Strained Missions: the diplomatic dilemmas of small states from the Global South in the area of autonomous weapons systems

Emerging technologies around autonomous weapons systems pose significant threats, particularly to small states in the Global South. Despite these threats, many such small states have struggled to participate in multilateral discussions to regulate and prohibit autonomous weapons systems, while the negotiations have been ongoing within the Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (GGE on LAWS) under the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (UNCCW) since 2017. This paper analyses the dilemmic positions small state diplomats find themselves in when trying to devote time and expertise to international discussions on autonomous weapons systems while at the same time negotiating the power politics within the international law-making system and working with a limited expertise pool and resource base. The research is based on interviews with diplomats in Geneva, participation data collated by the UN, and virtual and in-person observation of the GGE on LAWS discussions in the UNCCW. The paper concludes that disarmament diplomats from small states from the Global South face various challenges, including small governments back home that cannot address emerging issues, great power politics, unequal international legal systems, and absent common positions on disarmament. Nevertheless, these same small states have dealt with such challenges, so as to decolonise the asymmetric diplomatic space within which they operate.