Box IV - Statement by Stop Killer Robots to the GGE on lethal autonomous weapons systems, 1-5 September

The following statement was delivered on Tuesday, September 2, 2025, by A-Young Moon to delegates participating in the meeting of the Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), which took place on 1-5 September 2025.

Thank you, Chair.

One key element of meaningful human control over weapons systems, alongside the restriction of the parameters of operation of systems that states have begun to address in Box III, is the need for users to have a sufficient understanding of systems and how they will interact with the context of use.

We therefore welcome the elaboration in Box IV of some of the elements and requirements that can contribute to such understanding. Again, we urge states to move to negotiations on a treaty, establish in a legal instrument that the functional understanding of systems is a core requirement, and elaborate the elements of this.

We welcome the separation in the current draft of the very different types of bias that have been under discussion by states.

We read paragraph 6 on ‘unintended bias’ to include autonomous systems reproducing in their effects structures of bias and discrimination that exist in our societies, such as sexism, racism and ableism. For Stop Killer Robots, when it comes to life and death decisions, deciding who to kill, the reproduction of biases that will cause disproportionate harm to already marginalised people is not something that we should merely seek to mitigate: it is abhorrent and fundamentally unacceptable.

This is a key reason why we must categorically prohibit systems that target people within a broader legal instrument on autonomous weapons systems: we must draw this red line, that this is not something we can countenance.

Racial, gender, and other bias is a problem for anti-personnel autonomous weapons systems much more than it is a problem for systems designed or used to target military materiel. For this reason, we urge states again to consider the anti-personnel autonomous weapons systems issue more fully, and to support a prohibition.

Thank you, Chair.