Maat association for Peace, Development, and Human Rights participated in the first session of the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on Emerging Technologies in the Area of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS, convened from March 2 to 6, 2026. in Geneva, Switzerland.
During the sessions, Maat provided substantive comments on the proposed text regarding the definition of autonomous weapons. In its intervention, Maat emphasized the necessity of removing ambiguity surrounding the term “human intervention,” demanding that the definition include full comprehension of the mechanisms of decision-making and formulation. Maat stressed that the aim of this amendment is to ensure the human operator’s ability to review the recommendations formulated by the machine and verify their full compliance with international humanitarian law before pressing the execution button, thereby preventing military decisions from turning into a rigid automated process.
In a related context, Maat also delivered another intervention containing a critical perspective on paragraph four of item three in the draft. Maat called for the deletion of the paragraph that requires retaining autonomous weapons, considering that the international trend should lean towards restriction, not retention. Maat also renewed its demand for the inclusion of an explicit provision aimed at the comprehensive and clear prohibition of anti-personnel autonomous weapons systems, based on a firm human rights principle that decisions of life and death should not be left to algorithms.
These interventions come within the framework of the association’s efforts to ensure that the final draft is issued with decisive recommendations that grant humans full control over autonomous weapons, in accordance with the principles of international law.
shortlink: https://safearabregion.org/en/?p=45829
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