The encyclopaedia will serve as a technical and legal reference for armed forces and law enforcement agencies and personnel woridwide along with ministries of defence, foreign affairs, justice, and interior, as well as UN agencies and other international organisations, and relevant regional bodies. It will cover major weapons categories from small arms and light weapons (e.g. firearms, semi-automatic and automatic weapons, landmines, and improvised explosive devices) to the 'heavy weapons' categories included on the UN Register of Conventional Weapons (artillery, combat aircraft, tanks, and warships), as well as weapons of mass destruction, lt will include new and evolving weapons technologies such as the use of armed drones, dazzling lasers, and millimetre-wave weapons. For each weapon category, the entry will describe first the technical characteristics of the weapon and then the impact on the human body and/or solid structures, followed by detail of the relevant applicable international lavy, particulariy disarmament, humanitarian, and human rights law, as well as, where relevant, jus ad bellum. It will also include relevant case law from the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the Ad Hoc Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda as well as other international criminal courts, the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights, the African Commission and Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, the UN human rights treaty bodies and, where relevant, other regional and national courts. Each weapons treaty will receive its own entry incorporating a summary of the treaty's provisions, model implementing législation, and relevant case law at international, regional and national leyel. State adherence, including declarations and reservations, will also be reflected.
