Enable breadcrumbs token at /includes/pageheader.html.twig

United Nations Arms Conventions and Precedents

Human judgment is a central attribute when using force, agreed 70 countries, including the United States, most allies and friendly democracies, recognizing the urgency to create an international framework on autonomous weapons. This group issued a joint statement at the United Nations General Assembly.

“We therefore see an urgent need for the international community to further their understanding and address these risks and challenges by adopting appropriate rules and measures, such as principles, good practices, limitations and constraints,” said the nonbinding statement distributed on October 21, 2022.

“We emphasize the necessity for human beings to exert appropriate control, judgement and involvement in relation to the use of weapons systems in order to ensure any use is in compliance with International Law, in particular International Humanitarian Law, and that humans remain accountable for decisions on the use of force,” stated the text.

Iran, the People’s Republic of China and Russia were among the nations that did not support this document.

This joint declaration used the ongoing work by the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) as precedent. In 2019, a panel of experts addressed autonomous weapons and set guiding principles. The most relevant are:

International humanitarian law continues to apply fully to all weapons systems.
Human responsibility for decisions on the use of weapons systems must be retained.
Accountability for developing, deploying and using any emerging weapons system in the framework of the CCW must be ensured in accordance with applicable international law.
When developing or acquiring new weapons systems based on emerging technologies […] the risk of acquisition by terrorist groups and the risk of proliferation should be considered.

The goal of the experts’ recommendations was setting the “basis for the clarification, consideration [and development] of aspects of the normative and operational framework on emerging technologies in the area of lethal autonomous weapons systems,” according to the text.

The full list of signatories of the joint declaration is:

Albania, Argentina, Australia, Bahamas, Belgium, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Georgia, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Namibia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, San Marino, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sri Lanka, State of Palestine, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States of America, Uruguay, Venezuela and Austria.