Dear First Vice President, Dear Minister,
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
The International Committee of the Red Cross is encouraged by this meeting of the States of Latin America and the Caribbean to address one of the most worrying humanitarian concerns for the future of armed conflicts.
The unrestricted use of autonomous weapons risks losing control over the use of force. It could cause serious harm to civilians and those no longer fighting, and would undermine the ability of those who are fighting to abide by the rules and limitations of international humanitarian law.
How will civilians or wounded soldiers be protected if the users of the weapons no longer control who they kill or what they destroy?
There is also the fundamental challenge that autonomous weapons pose to our values, to our shared humanity. Should we tolerate a world in which conscious decisions about human life are replaced by machine calculations? Are we willing to accept the deployment of self-firing weapons, activated by self-programming artificial intelligence software?
Autonomous weapons in conflict are no longer a matter of tomorrow. These issues represent an urgent humanitarian priority today, and States must act now to address them by negotiating new legally binding international norms.
Such regulations should specifically prohibit unpredictable autonomous weapons and autonomous weapons designed or used to directly attack human beings. For other autonomous weapons, these standards should include strict restrictions on their development and use.
Despite the lack of progress after nine years of discussions in Geneva on the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, the majority of States, including many in this region, have expressed their support for the creation of legally binding standards.
What is needed now is principled political leadership to translate these national commitments into prompt action at the international level, and here I believe that Latin American and Caribbean states have an important role to play.
Many of you have played essential roles in humanitarian-driven processes to establish the necessary prohibitions and restrictions on weapons and their transfer, such as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the Arms Trade Treaty. You have helped to ensure that the ban on cluster munitions was not undermined by the adoption of weaker rules in the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.
The ICRC is confident that you will now help find ways to craft an effective international response to autonomous weapons that is commensurate with the serious humanitarian concerns they raise.
I wish you the best in this important conference, and I urge you to agree to a firm regional commitment from Latin American and Caribbean States to negotiate and adopt a new legally binding instrument on autonomous weapons.
Thank you so much.