Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso is a state party to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW).

Burkina Faso is a member of the African Group and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), both of which support the negotiation of a legally-binding instrument on autonomous weapons systems. At the 77th UN General Assembly First Committee meeting in October 2022, Burkina Faso said that it ‘deplores the fact that despite the communal conviction of the existence of threats, states struggle to overcome the different divergence of views to lend themselves to better arrangements, marked by commitment, flexibility and openness in order to face the many challenges, notably… the use of lethal autonomous weapons.'^[1]Statement by Burkina Faso, 77th UN General Assembly First Committee, 07 October 2022, https://reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/1com/1com22/statements/7Oct_BurkinaFaso.pdf

Burkina Faso has not spoken independently on the need for a legally binding instrument. During the third session of the 2021 CCW Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (GGE on LAWS), the African Group said that ‘autonomous weapons systems raise a number of ‘ethical, legal, moral and technical questions’, and that it looks forward to ‘concrete policy recommendations including elements of a legally binding instrument, stipulating prohibitions and regulations’ on autonomous weapon systems’.^[2]Statement by the African Group, CCW Group of Governmental Experts on LAWS, 03 December 2021: http://149.202.215.129:8080/s2t/UNOG/LAWS3-03-12-2021-AM_mp3_en.html; please note that this link leads to … Continue reading

On 25 October 2019, at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) First Committee meeting, Burkina Faso stated that ‘with regard to lethal autonomous weapons, they constitute a serious source of concern because the development and projection of the use of weapons that do not require human intervention raises many questions. It is therefore urgent to seriously consider the threat posed by this new category of weapons’.^[3]Statement by Burkina Faso, UN General Assembly First Committee, 25 October 2019, https://reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/1com/1com19/statements/25Oct_BurkinaFaso.pdf