As a co-founder of the Stop Killer Robots campaign, Human Rights Watch fully supports its longstanding call for states to launch negotiations on a new international treaty to prohibit and regulate autonomous weapon systems.
As other delegations have noted, this is urgently—and we’d now say desperately—needed to protect humanity from the threats posed by removing human control from the use of force. The time for principles, declarations, codes of conduct, best practices, and other voluntary measures has passed. We agree with others that incremental steps are no substitute for explicit new international rules on this grave concern.
Human Rights Watch appreciates the update provided by the CCW GGE chair and the two weeks of meetings held this year. Yet, as other delegations here have noted, progress on this urgent concern at the CCW is falling short. It is unfortunate that this year’s informal consultations on LAWS were divided between high contracting parties and observer delegations.
We reiterate that discussions on fundamental ethical, human rights, peace and security, proliferation and other concerns raised by autonomous weapons systems do not need to be limited to the confines of the Convention on Conventional Weapons. We welcome the UN Secretary-General’s report, which show significant policy convergence on key elements. We are encouraged by the overwhelmingly high number of votes in favor of the UN General Assembly resolution on autonomous weapons systems adopted by First Committee earlier this month.
We warmly welcome the informal consultations to be held next year at the United Nations in New York and can’t wait to participate. Thank you.
