Iraq

Iraq has attended all Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) meetings on autonomous weapons systems since 2016. Iraq has stated that ‘all weapons, including autonomous ones, should remain under the control and direct supervision of human beings’, and that ‘delegating a life or death decision to machines is a serious violation of international humanitarian law’.^[1]Statement by Iraq, CCW Group of Governmental Experts on LAWS, 03 August 2021, http://149.202.215.129:8080/s2t/UNOG/LAWS-03-08-2021-PM_mp3_en.html; please note that this link leads to the full … Continue reading

Iraq supports the negotiation of a legally binding instrument on autonomous weapons systems. At the 2023 CCW GGE on LAWS, Iraq said that ‘the negotiations of the GGE should lead to adopting a legally binding international instrument’.^[2]Statement by Iraq, CCW GGE on LAWS, 6 March 2023, https://conf.unog.ch/digitalrecordings/index.html?guid=public/61.0500/1A5B752B-9442-4C31-92D9-5EA184E502A9_10h11&position=8989&channel=ENGLISH

At the 2021 meeting of the Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (GGE on LAWS), Iraq stated that ‘we must adopt preventive measures governing the use of this category of weapons in the potential wars of the future’, and renewed its commitment ‘towards negotiations being held… so that at the end of the day we can adopt a legally binding instrument to govern this category of weapons.’^[3]Statement by Iraq, CCW Group of Governmental Experts on LAWS, 02 December 2021, http://149.202.215.129:8080/s2t/UNOG/LAWS3-02-12-2021-PM_mp3_en.html; please note that this link leads to the full … Continue reading

Iraq is a member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which also supports the negotiation of a legally binding instrument.^[4]Statement by the Non-Aligned Movement, Sixth Review Conference of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, 13 December 2021, … Continue reading