The Procedural Black Hole: Article 14 of the ICCPR and the Impossibility of a Fair Trial for Unlawful Killings by Autonomous Weapons Systems

Abstract

Autonomous weapons systems (AWS) that select and engage targets based on algorithmic processing rather than human input pose a challenge to international law that has been framed almost exclusively in substantive terms: whether such systems can distinguish combatants from civilians or apply proportionality. This article shifts the analytical focus to the procedural dimension of accountability. It argues that the operational characteristics of AWS, autonomy in target engagement, automated decision-making, and black-box opacity, structurally negate the minimum guarantees of Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and that this negation, rather than any substantive violation, constitutes the procedural mechanism through which the accountability gap for unlawful killings is produced. Drawing on doctrinal analysis of General Comment No. 32 and qualitative thematic analysis of institutional reports and scholarly commentary, the article demonstrates that the black-box nature of machine-learning decision-making makes it impossible to satisfy the rights to be informed of charges under Article 14(3)(a), to examine witnesses under Article 14(3)(e), and to a fair hearing before a competent tribunal under Article 14(1). The article concludes that Article 14 is not merely one violated right among many but the procedural precondition of all accountability, and that any future legal instrument on AWS must therefore incorporate binding procedural guarantees.