What is it about?
The laws of war focus on humans through the categories of civilians and combatants, placing the 'human' at the center of the targeting process. In this article I show how the law has a gender bias and fails to take into account how military targets are identified through emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), in contemporary high-tech warfare.
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Why is it important?
Finding that the law fails to take into account how military targets are identified and killed through processes that are only to a limited degree controlled by human actors, the call I make for a reworking of the laws of war is a urgent one, at least so if we are to offer adequate protection to those made vulnerable by new technologies in warfare and if we are to hold actors accountable for crimes during warfare.
Perspectives
I hope that this article invites its readers to think about what the "human" described in the current laws of war is or can be. Can we think of a digital body as a legitimate target and can we accept that an artificially intelligent entity decides what and whom to target and kill in wars?
Matilda Arvidsson
Department of Law, University of Gothenburg
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Targeting, Gender, and International Posthumanitarian Law and Practice: Framing The Question of the Human in International Humanitarian Law, Australian Feminist Law Journal, January 2018, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/13200968.2018.1465331.
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