Advocacy paper: A key opportunity to prevent the development of unacceptable autonomous weapons

IHL already restricts the development and use of autonomous weapons, but it does not provide all the answers. New, legally binding rules are urgently needed. The aim is not to ban all autonomous weapons, but to prevent the use of the most unacceptable ones to ensure that 21st century conflicts remain under human control. New rules would also provide clarity for developers, avoid costly redesigns, reduce legal risks and promote shared standards across countries.

The groundwork for regulating the use of these weapons is in place after over a decade of discussions within the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems, under the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. The GGE Chair’s “rolling text” offers a robust framework for developing a legally binding instrument based on a widely supported “two-tier” approach:

1. prohibit autonomous weapons that pose an unacceptable risk of violating IHL, including unpredictable autonomous weapons and those that target humans directly; and
2. restrict the development and use of other autonomous weapons, limiting the types of targets, and the geographic scope, duration, situations and scale of their use.

This approach ensures that human operators retain control and judgement over the use of force when employing autonomous
weapons.

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