UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) President Mirjana Spoljaric on Tuesday renewed their call for states to urgently adopt new international rules on autonomous weapons systems.
"Three years ago, we called on states to establish specific prohibitions and restrictions on autonomous weapon systems. Today, we renew this call with even greater urgency," said the two leaders in their joint appeal. "The fundamental concerns remain unchanged, but the risks have intensified. We are now dangerously close to crossing a moral red line: the autonomous targeting of humans by machines."
The development of weapons technologies has advanced at record speed, placing increasing strain on legal frameworks. Since the previous appeal three years ago, the gap between technological capability and regulatory constraint has widened, with advanced technologies employed on the battlefield amplifying the risk of harming civilians and civilian infrastructure and aggravating civilian suffering in armed conflict, they said.
"The development and use of autonomous weapon systems represent a further escalation, reducing human control over the use of force. Autonomous weapon systems are not part of a distant future -- a race toward greater autonomy in weapons systems is already well underway," they said.
States must show political courage and move beyond incremental discussions toward decisive action. Negotiations must begin now to urgently adopt a legally binding instrument to regulate autonomous weapon systems with clear prohibitions and restrictions, they said.
A failure to act quickly and decisively will cost lives. It will leave future generations to inherit a world in which the absence of clear and specific prohibitions and restrictions on these weapons opens the door to practices that would erode the protections international humanitarian law is meant to guarantee, a world where accountability is increasingly elusive as responsibility for errors and breaches of applicable rules becomes harder to establish, they warned.
Future generations will ask whether leaders acted when there was still a chance to set limits before these weapons proliferated beyond control. The upcoming seventh review conference of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in November offers the clearest path available for states to decide to move to negotiate a legally binding instrument. The painstaking work undertaken over the past three years forms the ideal basis for such negotiations, and must not be lost, they said.
"We urge states to seize this moment. Continuing to design weapon systems that make it easier to wage war will only undermine our collective efforts toward a more peaceful world. The path is clear. The need is urgent. Innovation must serve humanity, not endanger it," they said. ■
