DERECHO INTERNACIONAL HUMANITARIO Y DESARME.

As well as being a means to reduce international tension and promote peace, multilateral disarmament efforts support and strengthen international humanitarian law (IHL) by mitigating the impact of armed conflict. Multilateral disarmament treaties both remove types of weapons that by their nature are likely to be used in violation of IHL, and build global norms that stigmatize and delegitimize such weapons. These norms affect the behaviour even of states that have not joined the treaty concerned. These twin effects mean that over time, states become both less able and less willing to use weapons in violation of IHL. The experience with disarmament treaties such as the biological and chemical weapons conventions and the treaties banning antipersonnel landmines and cluster munitions provides useful lessons for efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons and to develop legally-binding measures to deal with autonomous weapon systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]