UN Secretary-General António Guterres and International Committee of the Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric called on Tuesday for "prohibitions and restrictions on autonomous weapon systems."
“We are now dangerously close to crossing a moral red line: the autonomous targeting of humans by machines,” the two leaders warned in a joint appeal, renewing a call they first made in 2023 for States to ban autonomous weapon systems by 2026. No action has yet been taken since that call.
In their new statement, Guterres and Spoljaric said the need for action had become even more urgent.
While the core concerns remain the same, the risks have grown significantly. The gap between technological capability and regulation has widened, as cutting-edge tools used on the battlefield increase the risk of harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure and deepen the suffering of civilian populations in armed conflict, they noted.
Autonomous weapons are generally defined as systems capable of selecting targets and using force without human intervention.
Such systems are already being used on battlefields and in other settings, increasing the risk of civilian casualties, Laurent Gisel, head of the ICRC’s Arms and Conduct of Hostilities Unit, told a press briefing in Geneva.
Experts say there have so far been no confirmed cases of fully autonomous weapons directly targeting people. However, that prospect is causing deep concern at both the UN and the ICRC.
