Campaigners seek ban on killer robots

Nations will vote on whether 
to consider the move at the 
annual meeting of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) taking place in Geneva on Friday.

France, which will chair the meeting, is proposing a mandate to add fully autonomous weapons to the Convention’s work programme next year.

The organisation Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is urging the international community to back the mandate, which could lead to a global agreement not to develop fully autonomous drones that select and engage targets without human intervention.

“Governments should begin to act now to ensure that human control over targeting and attack decisions is never relinquished to machines in the future,” said Steve Goose, from Human Rights Watch, a co-founder of the campaign.

Fully independent functioning weapons do not yet exist but drones operated by the US, UK, Israel and South Korea already have some degree of autonomy and lethality.

Some militarily hi-tech countries, such as China and Russia, are believed to be moving towards systems that would leave combat decisions to machines, say campaigners.