Article XIV: Treaty Revision Process

Any State Party may propose amendments to this treaty. “Amendments” are considered revisions to the main body and Articles of the treaty. Amendments include revisions to the purpose of the Articles of the Treaty. Under Article III, The ISIA Technical Secretariat, with a majority vote from the Executive Council, may change specific definitions and implementation methods, such as those relevant to Article IV, Article V, Article VI, Article VII, Article VIII, Article IX, and Article X. Fundamental revisions to the purposes of these Articles or to voting procedures require an Amendment.
Such proposed amendments will be submitted to the ISIA Director-General and circulated to the State Parties.
For an amendment to be formally considered, one third or more of the State Parties must support its consideration.
Amendments to the main body of the treaty are not ratified until accepted by all State Parties (with no negative votes).
If the Executive Council recommends to all States Parties that the proposal be adopted, the changes will be considered approved if no State Party rejects it within 90 days.
Three years after the entry into force of this Treaty, a Conference of the Parties shall be held in Geneva, Switzerland, to review the operation of this Treaty with a view to assuring that the purposes of the Preamble and the provisions of the Treaty are being realized. At intervals of three years thereafter, Parties to the Treaty will convene further conferences with the same objective of reviewing the operation of the Treaty.

Precedent

The NPT has a rigid amendment process, requiring approval by “a majority of the votes of all the Parties to the Treaty.” This intentionally makes formal changes extremely difficult. Our treaty follows this precedent with the aim of fortifying the agreement against short-term pressures to relax thresholds or weaken provisions.

Hard-to-amend (and thus hard-to-weaken) treaties rely on other mechanisms for strengthening as needed. The NPT has never been amended, but has been adapted through the five-yearly Review Conference stipulated in Article VIII, where consensus agreements are made “with a view to assuring that the purposes of the Preamble and the provisions of the Treaty are being realised.”

Similarly, Article XII of the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention relies on its five-yearly Review Conferences to strengthen the treaty through non-binding Confidence-Building Measures, as formal amendments are rare. Our agreement stipulates a three-year conference, as AI has been a field prone to rapid shifts; this period may need to be further shortened.

Article XV of the Chemical Weapons Convention makes a distinction between amendments and administrative or technical changes, with less stringent approval provisions for the latter. Similar language could be added to our draft agreement to provide a level of flexibility in managing future developments in the field of AI.

Article XV of the Outer Space Treaty Article contains an amendment clause, but the treaty has never been formally amended; instead, new treaties have been negotiated to address emerging space issues. This could be another option for shoring up weaknesses that may become apparent in an AI treaty.

Notes

Article XIV sets out the process to make major revisions to the treaty structure. These revisions require substantial support from the parties and there is a high bar to make such revisions. By contrast, changes to the details of various categories and restrictions can be made much more easily and rapidly (subject to slower review), as described in Article III, and as is necessitated by the fast pace of change in the field of AI. A careful review process seems warranted given the gravity of the situation, and given the risk of overzealous actors could, if left unchecked, impose misguided restrictions that inconvenience the public for little-to-no benefit.