UN and Red Cross issue warning on lethal autonomous weapons

The United Nations Secretary-General and the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross have issued a joint alarm on the risks of lethal autonomous weapons. In a statement released today, they warned that such weapon systems, capable of selecting and striking targets without direct human intervention, could soon be deployed in conflicts.

The two leaders called for the urgent start of international negotiations to establish binding restrictions on the use of these warfare technologies. The appeal highlights the dangerous proximity to a threshold beyond which life-or-death decisions could be completely delegated to machines, raising serious ethical questions and issues of international humanitarian law.

The debate on lethal autonomous weapons, often referred to as "killer robots," is not new but has gained extreme urgency due to recent technological advances. The concept stems from the development of weapon systems that integrate artificial intelligence to identify, track, and engage targets without requiring a human operator to give the final order for each attack. This automation represents an evolution compared to existing remote-controlled or semi-autonomous systems.

The main concerns involve the difficulty of attributing responsibility for violations of international law, the potential inability of machines to apply principles such as distinguishing between combatants and civilians, and the proportionality of the use of force. For years, several states, civil society organizations, and military ethics experts have been calling for a treaty that sets clear limits, but negotiations have stalled due to disagreements between technologically advanced countries and others concerned about the proliferation of these weapons.

The joint UN-Red Cross appeal comes at a time of multiple global conflicts and an accelerating high-tech arms race, where pressure to develop military advantages could outweigh ethical considerations. Without international rules, there is a risk of normalizing the use of systems that make lethal decisions autonomously, forever changing the nature of war.