Greece

Greece has participated in all Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) meetings on autonomous weapons systems.

Greece has not yet declared its position on the negotiation of a legally binding instrument on autonomous weapons systems.

At the 77th UN General Assembly First Committee meeting in October 2022, Greece stressed ‘the importance of the 11 guiding principles which constitute the foundation of the normative and operational framework for emerging technologies in the area of LAWS. We remain strong supporters of the principles that the use of lethal force must be accountable for and that human control must always be exerted over application of this lethal force.'^[1]Statement by Greece, 77th UN General Assembly First Committee, 12 October 2022, https://media.un.org/en/asset/k14/k14eirk6hg; please note that this link leads to the full recording & transcript … Continue reading

At the 2019 meeting of the CCW Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, Greece stated that ‘it is important to ensure that commanders and operators will remain on the loop of the decision making process in order to apply the appropriate human judgment over the use of force, for reasons not only related to accountability, but also-and-mainly to the protection of human dignity over the decision on life or death.’^[2]Statement by Greece, CCW Group of Governmental Experts on LAWS, 26 March 2019, https://reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/ccw/2019/gge/statements/26March_Greece5a.pdf Greece is a member of the European Union, which supports the creation of a ‘normative and operational framework’ on autonomous weapons systems.^[3]Statement by the European Union, UN General Assembly First Committee, 09 October 2020, https://reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/1com/1com20/statements/9Oct_EU.pdf