Iceland

Iceland is a state party to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), but it has not attended any CCW meetings on autonomous weapons systems to date.

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

At the 78th UN General Assembly First Committee in 2023, X co-sponsored resolution L.56 on autonomous weapons systems, and voted in favour of the resolution along with 163 other states. Resolution L.56 stressed the ‘urgent need for the international community to address the challenges and concerns raised by autonomous weapons systems’, and mandated the UN Secretary-General to prepare a report, reflecting the views of member and observer states on autonomous weapons systems and ways to address the related challenges and concerns they raise from humanitarian, legal, security, technological and ethical perspectives and on the role of humans in the use of force.

Speaking at First Committee in 2023, Iceland stated that ‘How stakeholders confront the military application and armament proliferation in the era of artificial intelligence will have long term consequences for global security. The use of artificial intelligence begs some serious questions that will demand close multilateral cooperation to avoid the very real risk of this technology becoming the tool of destruction rather than creation.’^[1]Statement by Iceland, UNGA First Committee, 09 October 2023. https://reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/1com/1com23/statements/9Oct_Iceland.pdf