Summit of the Future falters on autonomous weapons
Eyes turn to the General Assembly as Pact for the Future language on autonomous weapons is watered down
The latest draft of the Pact for the Future goes backwards on the regulation of autonomous weapons systems, eliminating the previous time-bound commitment to negotiate new international law.
The Pact is meant to identify solutions to global problems and commit to the global governance upgrades required to deliver them. Once finalised, world leaders will convene at the UN from 22-23 September to adopt the Pact at the Summit of the Future. The negotiations, which cover a dizzying range of subjects, are expected to conclude shortly, after which the text will be put under silence. If no state objects during this period the text will be considered final.
Talks began back in January and the project to take action on autonomous weapons was off to a promising start. The initial text, circulated by the German and Namibian co-facilitators, included the language:
“we commit to concluding without delay a legally binding instrument to prohibit lethal autonomous weapons systems”.
Following a round of talks with states, the co-facilitators strengthened the commitment in their first revision, released on 14 May 2024, adding a deadline:
“Conclude by 2026 a legally binding instrument to prohibit autonomous weapons systems…” (emphasis added)
This deadline echoes the UN Secretary-General’s call for action on autonomous weapons. Fast-forward to the present and the spoilers have been at it. This is where the text now stands, as compiled in the second revision circulated on 17 July:
"Advance with urgency discussions on lethal autonomous weapons systems through the existing intergovernmental process to develop an instrument, and other possible measures, including to address the risks posed by lethal autonomous weapons systems that select targets and apply force without human control or oversight and cannot be used in compliance with international humanitarian law."
This text has been watered down on several fronts:
The removal of any deadline for establishing regulations greenlights a continuation of the status quo, where states hold endless discussions without tangible progress, as they have done for over a decade. In parallel, the phenomenal pace of military tech development is fast-closing the window of opportunity to establish pre-emptive controls.
The stipulation that discussions should take place via “the existing intergovernmental process” appears to be a reference to keeping talks in the consensus-bound and therefore ineffectual Convention on Conventional Weapons. However, states could choose to interpret it to mean continuing discussions in the UN General Assembly too, which agreed a first resolution on autonomous weapons in 2023. Discussions in the CCW have been gridlocked for years and hold little promise for the negotiation of a new legal instrument, and certainly not a place where action can be “advanced with urgency” as the text suggests is required.
Unlike the previous version, the conditions described in the latest text for weapons systems that need to be addressed is not nearly as comprehensive as the approach favoured by the UN Secretary-General, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Stop Killer Robots campaign and a large number of states. This more comprehensive “two-tier” approach features a combination of outright prohibitions on systems that are legally or ethically unacceptable as well as regulations of all other types of autonomous weapons. The new Pact text uses “address” instead of “prohibit” when it lists some of the types of systems that clearly should not be permitted—and omits the second part of the two-tier structure: the catch-all regulation that needs to be applied to all autonomous weapons to ensure that the risks posed by increasing autonomy are adequately addressed.
Above all, unlike previous versions, the new text fails to make a clear commitment to negotiate a new legally binding instrument—the action that a large majority of UN Member States, the Secretary-General and a groundswell of civil society deem vital to protect civilians and keep humanity safe.
What next?
Negotiations on the Pact resumed at the end of July with the co-facilitators expected to release a revised draft imminently. The text must be finalised before the summit takes place on 22-23 September.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Pact for the Future language on autonomous weapons has collided with the same opposition encountered in the CCW. Both are consensus-bound routes in an age when consensus is often (mis)understood to mean giving each state the right to block any decision; they are also both routes where countries with advanced militaries have an outsized influence. It is clear that those states, who favour keeping this issue closely bound to the CCW where their positions will not be effectively challenged, have won this round.
It has, however, proved a useful opportunity for a different cohort of diplomats to engage on the issue (the CCW is based in Geneva, whereas the Pact process is in New York) and has revealed some positive alignment in favour of a new treaty which can be taken forward into the upcoming General Assembly First Committee meetings.
An increasingly mobilised New York diplomatic corps is significant because the UN frequently gets bogged down in territorialism and this issue is no different. A strong constituency has built around action on autonomous weapons in Geneva but ownership in the collective diplomatic psyche will need to shift to or be shared with New York if the most promising route for a new treaty—the General Assembly—is to be pursued.
A few notable takeaways on country positions include the EU not objecting to the idea of a new legally binding instrument nor pushing for negotiations to be restricted to the CCW, as revealed in a previous draft. This suggests that France, a permanent member of the Security Council that has not yet supported a legally binding instrument, and diplomatic heavyweight Germany, who has supported an instrument but consistently insisted that it should be negotiated through the CCW, may not ultimately stand in the way of the possible step of negotiations being triggered in the General Assembly—even if they do not support the idea.
Then there was the emergence of a common position from the Group of Latin America and Caribbean Countries (GRULAC). Though with earlier revisions there were reservations from some states about the idea of explicitly committing to the creation of a new legally-binding instrument and about moving action away from the dead-end CCW (for example, see Brazil’s position as outlined here), in later versions GRULAC appear to have come together to agree to support the idea of concluding a legally binding instrument by 2026.
In contrast, sources attending the negotiations revealed to Spoiler Alert that a number of states signalled a clear lack of urgency on the issue by opposing the inclusion of a deadline for regulating autonomous weapons. Many of these will not be a surprise—the US, the UK, Japan and the so-called Like-Minded Group (which includes China and Russia)—but it was a surprise to learn that Switzerland was allegedly in this group, speaking out against the 2026 deadline. The deadline was subsequently omitted from the latest draft.
While there remains an opportunity to strengthen the final language on autonomous weapons in the Pact for the Future, all eyes are now turning to this the General Assembly’s First Committee, taking place from 7 October to 8 November 2024. Unlike the CCW or the Pact negotiations, the General Assembly operates on a majority-basis and will provide the chance for New York diplomats to build on the recent mobilisation when they negotiate a new resolution on autonomous weapons.
The General Assembly resolution is expected to respond to the recently published results of the Secretary-General’s consultation on AWS—see Spoiler Alert’s reporting for further info on this. States could decide to use the resolution to mandate negotiations on a treaty to start in 2025 - there are certainly sufficient numbers in the General Assembly to do this, but is there the political will?