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© Campaign to Stop Killer Robots

© Campaign to Stop Killer Robots

Are steps needed now in case high-tech weapons of the future are designed to attack and kill on their own?  Members of a United Nations treaty on inhumane weapons have decided an expert group will deliberate on the topic next year.  The World Council of Churches (WCC) joined with civil society organizations and a growing number of concerned governments to advocate for that step and also for plans to ban such weapons.

“The unique characteristics of lethal autonomous weapons and the rapidity of technological advances demand new legal regulation, and swiftly,” said Peter Prove of the WCC, addressing a treaty conference that met in Geneva, 12-16 December.

To “delegate decisions about life and death to machines” is “deeply troubling”, he said. “The core inducement of lethal autonomous weapons seems to be the temptation to be able to target and kill efficiently under a cloak of comfortable anonymity.” Prove is the director of the WCC’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs.

“We and other representatives of world religions follow [your work] because the fundamental basis of your mandate is the protection of human life and human dignity.  This is especially important at the start of a potential new era in warfare, when new ground rules are needed,” the WCC statement to the conference says.

“No one under law, in good conscience or in good faith can outsource to a machine the judgment, the responsibility and the accountability for taking human life,” Prove said.

The WCC and Pax Christi International co-sponsor an Interfaith Declaration in Support of a Ban on Fully Autonomous Weapons, which many member church leaders have signed. The WCC recommended a pre-emptive ban on such weapons in its Statement on the Way of Just Peace at the Busan Assembly in 2013.

The UN headquarters in Geneva have hosted three informal meetings to explore the topic since 2014. Scientists, computer engineers, human rights advocates, humanitarian officials and others generally warned against the development of any weapon that would operate without human control.

Campaign to Stop Killer Robots

Commission of the Churches on International Affairs