Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons

● The United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) also known as the Inhumane Weapons Convention was concluded at Geneva in 1980 and entered into force in 1983.

● The convention bans or restricts weapons considered to cause unnecessary, unjustifiable and indiscriminate suffering such as incendiary explosives, blinding lasers and booby traps that don’t distinguish between fighters and civilians. 

● Coverage: The convention covers land mines, booby traps, incendiary devices, blinding laser weapons and clearance of explosive remnants of war.The convention has no provisions for killer robots.

● India has ratified this Convention.

Why in the News? Recently, 125 nations that belong to an agreement called the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons have said that they wanted curbs on killer robots (Killer Robots are fully autonomous weapons that would be able to select and engage targets without meaningful human control).