UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called for an international ban on lethal autonomous weapons, describing them as morally repugnant. He specifically targets systems with unpredictable behavior and anti-personnel weapons that operate without human intervention.
The initiative follows a joint statement issued on August 25, 2026, by Guterres and ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric. They warned that the global community is nearing a critical threshold regarding machine autonomy in military targeting decisions.
The push for regulation is timed ahead of the Seventh Review Conference of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, set for November 2026 in Geneva. As of September 2026, 76 states support formal negotiations on binding rules for these technologies.
While 76 nations favor new restrictions, the US and Russia oppose them, maintaining that current international humanitarian law is sufficient. The UN is also addressing broader concerns regarding the lack of regulation in civilian AI applications.
