 Excellencies, distinguished guests, distinguished panelists, dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Vincent Bernat, I'm the editor-in-chief of the International Review of the Red Cross. And I'm excited and very honored to welcome you tonight to the inauguration of our first research and debate cycle, which focuses on new technologies and modern battle space. It is a pleasure to see so many of you here in this room to launch this new initiative. And before telling you more about the cycle, allow me to thank our partners and those who made this inaugural event possible. First of all, I would like to thank the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and the Swiss Permanent Mission to the United Nations for co-sponsoring this event and for their support towards the World Conference cycle. I would like also to thank our partner delegations in the field and our external academic partners who will relay globally this event and the next ones. Finally, I would like to say a special thank you to our distinguished panelists. We have kindly accepted to spend the evening with us. Considering their extensive expertise and knowledge on the topic, I really look forward to this discussion. Thank you. So let me now say a few words about the cycle itself. I won't go into the many reasons why we chose this topic. I think your presence tonight already shows that there is a big interest on this subject. Let me just say that this discussion continues the one we have started in the International Review of the Red Cross. We published recently this issue, and you will find more copies available outside. This issue focusing on new technologies and warfare. As many of you know already, we are celebrating this year the 150th anniversary of the first Geneva Convention for the amelioration of the condition of the wounded in armies in the field. And a clear parallel can be drawn between the time of Henri Dunant and the present days. Because at the time already, they realized that new technologies were about to change warfare. And this period of change is still continues today with the emergence of new technologies, new means, and methods of warfare. At the time like today, there was already a recognition that such progress was creating new dangers, and that it was necessary to anticipate and manage new risks. So the answers provided by the founders of the movement and international law was to create a body of rules. And today, IHL faces new challenges. International United Law faces new challenges in its capacity to provide a relevant legal and operational solutions to the problems posed by the new technologies. So this is precisely why the first research and debate cycle will explore this topic. The conference tonight is only the beginning of a four-month cycle, which will unfold in several events around the globe. So it is not limited to a one-off event. It aims at connecting all stakeholders on the topic, from academics and researchers on international maintenance law to scientists and from military representatives to human rights lawyers and humanitarian practitioners. So we hope that the various stages of this conference cycle will facilitate discussion and exchanges of knowledge between these stakeholders. And not only through conferences, but also through interviews, academic articles, blog posts, and more. And you will be able to follow that on our web page. You can connect it through this QR code on the leaflet on your seats. So at the end of this cycle, we hope to come with a beginning of solutions, answers to the problems that we'll start discussing this evening. It is now my pleasure to give the floor to Dr. Nils Melser from the Geneva Center for Security Policy. We'll moderate tonight's discussion. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for being here, for showing your interest in this panel. It is a pleasure to be here, to be able to moderate this discussion, especially in view of the fact that we have a great panel. Let me briefly introduce to you our panelists today. All of them are highly valued colleagues, good friends. I have had the privilege to work with them several occasions. I'll take an old technology to make sure, because they have been changing functions many times since I know them, just to be sure that I'm not giving you anything wrong here. So just to my left is Dr. Roberta Arnold. She is an attorney and researcher at the Military Academy of the ETH in Zurich at the Chair of Strategic Studies. Just to her left is Professor Marco Sassoli, Professor of International Law, and also the Director of the Department of International Law and International Organizations at the University of Geneva. And to my far left, Dr. Bill Boothby, who is an associate fellow at the Geneva Center of Security Policy. But he is also a retired Air Commodore and former Deputy Director of the Legal Service of the Royal Air Force in the United Kingdom. Then just to my left, Professor Noel Sharkey, who is Emeritus Professor for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. So he's really the one that knows how these things work. And also a Professor for Public Engagement at the University of Sheffield and the Chairman of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control. And then to my far right, Mr. Laurent Giselle, who is a thematic legal advisor at the Legal Division of the ICRC. I would like to recall that this is an inaugural panel, an opening panel, introductory panel to a whole cycle of events that will focus on individual technologies such as autonomous systems but also on cyber warfare and other more focused events. So the purpose of this introductory panel really is to have a more generic view on new technologies and their likely impact on warfare. The rapid development of new technology often raises the question as to how its military use will influence warfare in the future. And consequently also how international humanitarian law, the law of our comfort, is it designed to govern these kinds of situations, how it will apply, and how it should be interpreted in relation to the use of this new technologies in warfare. Propose that we will structure this discussion around two broad areas. First, an introductory part that we'll kind of try to clarify what are we really talking about when we're talking about new technologies. And one of this is science fiction. And one of this is really happening or likely to really happen in the foreseeable future. That's kind of the first part. So we have all this background. We're all up to speed to that. And the second part then is also, well, what are the legal issues related to that? Can the existing law actually keep up with this rapid development? And is it an appropriate answer to this technological development? And also, once we have identified the problem areas, what are possible ways forward from here? The outlook, generally, what could be possible additional responses to this type of situation? In terms of format, I wouldn't like to have a presentation, a collection of individual presentations that last for 20 minutes each. And then in the end, you get to ask three questions. I'd like to structure this more as a discussion. I would like to prioritize the discussion between the panelists around these four questions in the beginning, maybe the first hour or so, depending on how it goes. And then open up to not just question and answers, but discussion also with you. Because many of you bring important experience and expertise also here to this event. And we would certainly like to benefit from that.