Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone has participated in Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) meetings on autonomous weapons systems since 2014.

Sierra Leone supports the negotiation of a legally binding instrument on autonomous weapons systems. In a joint statement delivered by Sierra Leone on behalf of a group of eleven states at the 2021 CCW Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (GGE on LAWS), Sierra Leone called for ‘an all-inclusive approach to adopt a legally binding instrument to ensure the prohibition of autonomous weapons systems with a view to upholding human dignity and avoiding further international instability.'^[1]Statement by Sierra Leone on behalf of Argentina, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Ecuador, Nigeria, Panama, the Philippines, Peru, Sierra Leone, Palestine and Uruguay, CCW Group of Governmental Experts on … Continue reading

Sierra Leone is a member of the African Group within the United Nations, and is also a member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), both of which support the negotiation of a legally binding instrument on autonomous weapons systems.

During the third session of the 2021 GGE on LAWS, the African Group said that ‘autonomous weapons systems raise a number of ‘ethical, legal, moral and technical questions’, and that it looks forward to ‘concrete policy recommendations including elements of a legally binding instrument, stipulating prohibitions and regulations’ on autonomous weapons systems.^[2]Statement by the African Group, CCW Group of Governmental Experts on LAWS, 3 December 2021, http://149.202.215.129:8080/s2t/UNOG/LAWS3-03-12-2021-AM_mp3_en.html; please note that this link leads to … Continue reading