Convention on Conventional Weapons

The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), formally 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, was adopted in Geneva on 10 October 1980 and entered into force on 2 December 1983. It is administered by the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) in Geneva.

The CCW itself is a short framework or "chapeau" treaty; the substantive rules sit in its protocols, which states join individually. The original three protocols cover:

• Protocol I on Non-Detectable Fragments (weapons whose primary effect is to injure with fragments undetectable by X-ray).
• Protocol II on Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices, later strengthened as Amended Protocol II in 1996.
• Protocol III on Incendiary Weapons, restricting their use against civilians and against military targets located among civilians.

Two later protocols were added:

• Protocol IV on Blinding Laser Weapons (1995), which prohibits laser weapons designed to cause permanent blindness.
• Protocol V on Explosive Remnants of War (2003), requiring parties to clear unexploded and abandoned ordnance after conflicts.

In 2001 the scope of the Convention was extended from international armed conflicts to also cover non-international armed conflicts via an amendment to Article 1.

The CCW operates by consensus, which has made progress slow on contemporary issues. Since 2013–2014 a Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) has discussed lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) under the CCW, but as of writing has not produced a binding instrument. Frustration with this pace prompted parallel processes outside the CCW, most notably the 1997 Ottawa Treaty on anti-personnel mines and the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, both negotiated when CCW consensus stalled.