Initial UN agreement on autonomous weapons was reached

“Geneva positive news: 128 States reached a consensus in the GGE on autonomous lethal weapons systems (LAWS)”, announced today the Dutch Foreign Minister, Tom Berendsen, whose country presides over the discussions.

The Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems led this week the meetings at the UN headquarters in Geneva, which concluded on Friday night.

“ As military technology evolves rapidly, this marks an important milestone in regulating these systems,” added the ruler on the X network.

The development and use of weapons capable of selecting targets and exerting force against them without human intervention is expanding.

“The development and use of autonomous weapons systems outside a clear restrictive framework raises serious legal, ethical and humanitarian issues,” according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Like various civil society organisations, the ICRC calls on States to adopt “legally binding rules prohibiting unforeseeable autonomous weapons and those designed and used to exert force directly against people,” as well as to “strictly regulate the design and use of all other autonomous weapons.”

At the UN, States have been discussing autonomous weapons under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) for over a decade.

Although the mandate of the group of government experts ended this week, countries managed to agree on a text that establishes basic principles, which has not yet been published.

Nicole van Rooijen, executive director of the international coalition Stop Killer Robots, followed closely the discussions, which ended around 3:00 local (02:00 in Lisbon).

The document adopted today “gives a definition of autonomous weapons, while no definition had yet been agreed by all States,” he said.

“ It also addresses how international humanitarian law should apply to these weapons and affirms the need for significant human control over these weapons. This is the main point,” the representative told AFP.

At the CCW Review Conference in November, States may decide on the follow-up of the report, including whether or not they initiate negotiations to develop a treaty establishing rules for the conduct and use of these weapons.

Last week, the UN and the Red Cross renewed the warning about the risks that the development of autonomous weapons will quickly lead to “overtake a moral ‘red line’”, leaving machines the decision to kill people.

In 2023, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, and the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, had jointly asked the States to impose the ban on these autonomous weapons systems by this year.

But this appeal was left unanswered.

“ We renew this appeal more urgently. Fundamental concerns remain, but risks have increased. We are now dangerously close to overcoming a moral ‘red line’: autonomous targets of human beings by machines,” they said in a new appeal.

These autonomous weapons are generally defined as weapons capable of choosing targets autonomously and using force without human intervention.

According to experts, no confirmed use of completely autonomous weapons targeting people directly has been recorded to date. But these possibilities are of great concern to the UN and the ICRC.