As the world rearms, Geneva keeps diplomacy alive

An unprecedented number of ongoing conflicts and rising geopolitical tensions are pushing governments around the world to increase defense budgets and rearm. While this is understandable, an ever-increasing spiral in this direction is not sustainable and will decrease the chances for peace. Thus, diplomacy in the field of peace and security is only becoming more, not less, significant. Against this backdrop, the arms control machinery and diplomacy in multilateral Geneva are still turning, and relevant negotiations continue.

Two side events, one purpose

The Twelfth Conference of State Parties (CSP12) to the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which took place at the end of August, brought its 116 States Parties together to assess implementation of the treaty. The ATT sets standards for the transfer of arms and ammunition and has the overarching purpose of reducing human suffering. As its annual forum, CSP12 allows States Parties, signatories, observers, UN bodies, and civil society actors to discuss progress and compliance with the ATT.

Shortly after, the Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (CCW GGW on LAWS) held its last session before the end of its mandate, bringing together governmental experts and representatives, civil society actors, and academics to discuss the application of international humanitarian law to autonomous weapons systems, including drones and military artificial intelligence (AI). While the group has held meetings since 2016, negotiations have struggled to keep up with new and emerging technologies on today’s battlefields, where principles of international humanitarian law have too often been violated and weapons already select and engage targets with little or no human involvement.

The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Geneva Office supported both meetings through one side event each to underline both the relevance of arms control treaties, ongoing negotiations and the strains these processes are under given geopolitical challenges.

While a treaty on the trade of weapons and the responsibilities of exporting nations already exists (ATT), the content, scope, and forum for a potential treaty on LAWS are still being debated.

Despite these challenges, both events demonstrated that, due to the interconnected nature of the arms and defense industry as well as its negative consequences that surpass national borders, multilateral fora are key. The commonly-held belief that multilateral systems have lost their relevance was challenged. Case studies highlighted during the side events showed that negotiations and treaties significantly influence states’ and institutional practices and that, in turn, middle powers and civil society continue to be able to shape these processes.

The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT): 12 years on

Together with the Geneva Academy and the NGO coalition Control Arms, FES co-hosted a side event focused on law, discretion, and compliance around Articles 6 and 7 of the ATT.

The ATT, like any international treaty, is a living instrument. Its provisions are not rules set in stone per se, but rather, over time, state practice, domestic litigation, civil society investigations, and broader legal developments clarify the meaning and application of the treaty. As the ATT regulates the arms trade, it requires exporting member states to further control and restrict their arms exports in situations where they could further aggravate conflict, cause violations of international law or UN Security Council decisions, as well as obliging them to undertake significant risk assessment before a decision on whether to authorize an export is made. Speakers at the side event used examples of court cases that showed that the ATT is increasingly being tested at the national level, with examples of litigation in the Netherlands and Belgium.

National courts have the ability to scrutinize governments’ application of their international legal obligations (such as the ATT), as is the case in the Netherlands and Belgium. While civil society continues to struggle to obtain information about states’ practices due to a lack of transparency, open-source research and investigative journalism have contributed to these complaints and court cases, which have the potential to establish legal precedents that could pave the way for future litigation, strengthen accountability, and ultimately improve the behavior of states and companies.

Additionally, the focus was on the inadequacy of private-sector due diligence in the arms trade. Comparisons with sectors such as sanctions, anti-money laundering, and compliance showcase that greater due diligence is possible and that due diligence in the arms trade is needed, especially as more resources are spent and the lines between civilian and military technology are increasingly blurry. As a recommendation, due diligence should become a continuous process involving all actors with access to relevant information, from manufacturers, banks, and brokers to freight forwarders and customs authorities. Such a mechanism would enable shared responsibility and greater information-sharing and raise the costs and accountability in case of violations. Ideally, governments and private sector actors would then halt or suspend problematic arms transfers before the weapons or ammunition reach the wrong hands and harm occurs.

“Human Control” at the Crossroads of Governance

During the CCW GGE on LAWS, PEACEMOMO and FES Geneva co-organized a side event on 1 September 2026, which explored the concept of “human control” over autonomous weapon systems and military AI and how they are governed or, more specifically, excluded from governance, using the example of two AI acts at the level of the European Union and South Korea.

As a core concept of a potential future treaty, “meaningful human control” has been subject to intense debates among various member states and during the negotiations at previous GGE meetings since its inception in 2016. Given the growing use of drones and AI on today’s battlefields, as well as the negative consequences for civilians – civil society actors and several UN member states are concerned that we are witnessing a retreat from the idea that a human being, not just a machine, has to stay meaningfully in charge whenever AI is used to make decisions about the use of war and lethal force. Legal experts from the ICRC highlighted that the responsibility to comply with international humanitarian law rests with member states/governments and that there are ways to restrict targeting, geographical and temporal scopes, as well as other design features, to ensure that this responsibility is sufficiently met. Moreover, representatives from the NGO Coalition to Stop Killer Robots highlighted what they are expecting from the negotiations, the contents of a final report, and components of a potential international treaty on LAWS.

Moreover, the side event focused on the status and prospects of a potential agreement on human control in LAWS, how human control could look in practice, and compared the cases of the European Union (EU) AI Act and the Republic of Korea (ROK) Framework Act on AI.

Both the EU AI Act and the ROK Framework Act on AI used language from negotiations and final reports from previous GGE meetings to formulate relevant restrictions. This demonstrates that even if there is not yet a treaty, ongoing negotiations influence state practice and legislation. Nonetheless, in both frameworks, regulatory gaps that exclude military and national security AI from their general AI frameworks persist. In the view of civil society, these gaps deliberately deferred responsibility and deprioritized human safety and human rights protections in favor of national priorities in the race for military and general AI advantage.

Given the significance of human control for a potential future treaty, the side event contributed to the negotiations during the week-long meeting. In the lead-up to the Review Conference in November, FES will continue to stay engaged alongside member states and civil society to support this process.

Geneva still offers a space for arms control

Both side events demonstrated that even as the security landscape becomes more strained, the international community has evidently not given up on writing the rules that govern how and by whom weapons are used – and that negotiations at the multilateral level and state practice significantly influence one another.

With the ultimate aim of protecting civilians and reducing human suffering, these forums showcase that multilateral diplomacy on arms and weapons control remains alive, even as the pressures that pull states toward rearmament and a focus on national security grow stronger.