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Mr. Chairman, distinguished delegates.
International humanitarian law prohibits attacks on persons who have surrendered.
But a person hors de combat must be recognized as such, and recognition requires two things: signs that can be perceived, and time in which to perceive them and act.
The signs have always existed — a raised hand, a laid-down weapon, a white cloth.
But those signs were made to be understood by human beings.
They are not machine-readable. To a machine, a white cloth is a number, not a signal.
Within that time window, the signal needs to be read, and the system needs to be able to stop before irreversible action.
In your weapons reviews, that time must be measured.
The obligation remains in force.
No one can be required to do the impossible — ad impossibilia nemo tenetur. But an impossibility created by design is not fate. It is a choice — and a choice can be examined.
Thank you.
Human Flag asks States to verify and document, in the reviews they already conduct, whether their systems preserve that time — and to test the published candidate signal as part of determining whether the obligation can be performed at machine speed.