Costa Rica

Costa Rica has participated in all Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons meetings on autonomous weapons systems since 2016. Costa Rica has said that ‘new technologies and autonomous applications raise legal challenges, ethical and humanitarian challenges which need to be addressed comprehensively.’^[1]Statement by Costa Rica, CCW Group of Governmental Experts on LAWS, 2 December 2021, http://149.202.215.129:8080/s2t/UNOG/LAWS3-02-12-2021-AM_mp3_en.html; please note that this link leads to the full … Continue reading Costa Rica supports the negotiation of a legally binding instrument on autonomous weapons systems.

Costa Rica hosted the 2023 Latin American and the Caribbean conference on the social and humanitarian impact of autonomous weapons, which resulted in the historic Belén Communiqué, in which more than 30 countries from the region called for the urgent negotiation of an international legally binding instrument, with prohibitions and regulations with regard to autonomy in weapons systems.’ Costa Rica is a signatory of the Communiqué.

At the 2023 CCW GGE on LAWS, Costa Rica stated that ‘the risks posed by AWS continue to grow and there is a need for an international instrument that ensures meaningful human control and this must be satisfied …We would like a mandate for negotiations on a LBI on autonomy in weapon systems that includes IHL and ethical considerations as well, this would also help to prevent the humanitarian and social impact that would be inherent in the use of these weapon systems.’^[2]Statement by Costa Rica, 2023 CCW GGE on LAWS, 15 May … Continue reading

At the Sixth Review Conference of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in December 2021, Costa Rica said that ‘autonomous weapons are problematic’ when the impacts on humanitarian law and non-proliferation are considered. To address this, Costa Rica stated that it ‘will continue to work constructively, committed to multilateralism, to ensure the adoption of an instrument which will prohibit use of these weapons.’^[3]Statement by Costa Rica, Sixth Review Conference of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, 13 December 2021, http://149.202.215.129:8080/s2t/UNOG/RCHCP6-13-12-2021-PM_mp3_en.html; please … Continue reading In a joint statement by thirteen countries, Costa Rica stated that it advocates for an ‘internationally agreed prohibitions and regulations on autonomous weapon systems, to move expeditiously to address humanitarian, military, legal, ethical, moral and other concerns over the far-reaching implications of the development and use of these weapons.’^[4]Statement by Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Palestine, Philippines, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Sierra Leone and Uruguay, Sixth Review Conference of the CCW, 17 … Continue reading

At the 77th UN General Assembly First Committee meeting, Costa Rica said that ‘One of the problems we have to deal with the LAWS, and with any other intelligent systems that we deploy that minimize the taking of decisions by humans, is that there is no guarantee that their deployment will lead to less biased results. Our own assumptions, limitations, and biases are encoded in the technology we deploy, and programming machines to target victims means arming and automating our own prejudices, not remove them.'^[5]Statement by Costa Rica, 77th UN General Assembly First Committee, 20 October 2022, https://reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/1com/1com22/statements/20Oct_CostaRica.pdf

At the 2023 CARICOM conference on the human impacts of autonomous weapons, Costa Rica joined the CARICOM Declaration on Autonomous Weapons Systems, stating its commitment to ‘support the indispensability of meaningful human control over the use of force and thereby encourage the pursuit of an international legally binding instrument which incorporates prohibitions and regulations on AWS’, and to ‘collaborate on endeavours aimed at negotiating an international legally binding instrument that prohibits unpredictable or uncontrollable AWS capable of using force without meaningful human control, and prohibit those designed or employed to apply force against persons, while implementing regulations for other forms of AWS’.^[6]CARICOM Declaration on Autonomous Weapons Systems, https://www.caricom-aws2023.com/_files/ugd/b69acc_c1ffb97ed9024930a3205ae4e34c1b45.pdf