Conference: The Certain Conventional Weapons Convention at 30

The International Law Centre at the Swedish National Defence College, in partnership with the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) and the International Society of Military Law and the Law of War, has organized a conference on "The Certain Conventional Weapons Convention at 30 – Evolution, Contemporary Relevance, Context, and Challenges Ahead," September 16-17, 2010, in Stockholm. The program is available here. Here's the idea:

On 10 October 1980, States assembled in Geneva adopted the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons which may be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects (CCW). The CCW is a manifestation of several general principles of the law of armed conflict: the protection of the civilian population against the effects of hostilities, the limitation of belligerents in their choice of methods and means of warfare, and the prohibition of the employment of weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering. Simultaneously, the CCW is also an instrument of weapons control. Since the adoption of the Mines and Explosive Remnants of War Protocols, the CCW has also begun to take on regulation of the post-conflict phase.

The CCW and its Protocols are instruments which are firmly embedded in the broader context of military-technological developments and the laws regulating them. As for technological developments, the advent of cyber warfare, unmanned and nanotechnological weapons systems, and non-lethal weapons demonstrate some of the new challenges concerning the legal regulation of weapon systems and warfare. Some examples of the legal context can be seen in Article 36 of the First Additional Protocol of 1977 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 on the review of the legality of new weapons, or treaties such as the Ottawa Convention and the recent Convention on Cluster Munitions.

The 30th anniversary of the adoption of the CCW is an appropriate moment to take stock of the treaty and its Protocols in its broader context of the law of armed conflict, the law of arms control and of post-conflict reconstruction, to consider the challenges that new weapons and weapons systems pose to international legal regulation and the prospects for the law of conventional weaponry, and to consider possible themes for the 2011 Review Conference.