Kuwait

Kuwait has participated in a number of Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (GGE on LAWS) meetings since 2017.

At the 78th UN General Assembly First Committee in 2023, Kuwait voted in favour of resolution L.56 on autonomous weapons systems, 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.

Kuwait is a member of the Non-Aligned Movement, which supports the negotiation of a legally binding instrument on autonomous weapons systems. At the 2020 United Nations General Assembly First Committee meeting, in a statement with which Kuwait aligned itself, the NAM stated that ‘there is an urgent need to pursue a legally binding instrument on LAWS.’^[1]Statement by the Non-Aligned Movement, UN General Assembly First Committee, 09 October 2020, https://reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/1com/1com20/statements/9Oct_NAM.pdf Kuwait has not spoken independently on the need for a legally binding instrument.