SNA (Birmingham) — Human Rights Watch issued a report earlier this month urging world leaders to move forward with a ban on autonomous weapons systems. This latest plea comes nearly a decade after the organization co-founded the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, and as advanced military drones are operating in the skies over Ukraine.

Explaining why it finds autonomous weapons systems to pose a particular threat to humanity, the rights organization argues that “machines cannot recognize people as ‘people.’  So machines deciding whether or not to subject us to attack is the ultimate form of digital dehumanization.” They go on to suggest that a new treaty–similar to the 2008 treaty banning cluster munitions–will be required to meet this goal.

Talks aiming for a worldwide ban on lethal autonomous weapons systems have been ongoing since 2014 at the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, where member states rely on a consensus approach to decision making. This means that even a single country can block proposals.

In fact, major countries have repeatedly rejected proposals to ban autonomous weapons, including Australia, China, India, Iran, Israel, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

New Delhi and Moscow even objected this year to having nongovernmental organizations present and participating in the talks.

Nevertheless, more than seventy countries do support such a ban, and they are bolstered by organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has denounced such weapons as being “morally repugnant and politically unacceptable.”

This is not merely a theoretical issue or a future problem: autonomous weapons are currently being used by both sides in the Russia-Ukraine war.

Russia has been employing hundreds of Iranian HESA Shahed-136 drones–which are classified as autonomous weapons–against Ukrainian infrastructure and other targets. For their part, the Ukrainian side has been receiving autonomous-capable Phoenix Ghost and AeroVironment Switchblade drones from the United States.

All of these models conduct “kamikaze” attacks against targets without needing to be controlled by a pilot. Their targets are programmed before launch. In the case of the Shahed-136, they are routinely launched in swarms of five, making it difficult for defenders to stop all of them.

Indeed, one military advantage autonomy provides is that it makes the drone less vulnerable to defense strategies based on jamming or otherwise cutting the command and control link with drone pilots.

As sensor and other technologies advance, such drones are expected to become capable of identifying certain kinds of people, or even individuals, and hit them with lethal attacks.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice-prime minister and minister of digital transformation, stated last month that “we have been convinced once again the wars of the future will be about maximum drones and minimal humans.”

While opposed to a formal treaty banning autonomous weapons, Washington has advocated a “non-binding code of conduct” on their use and development. This view was advanced last December by US State Department legal adviser Joshua Dorosin in a review meeting of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.

While major countries continue to block efforts to impose a ban, activists warn that the danger to humanity is increasing.

Human Rights Watch spokesperson Bonnie Docherty noted, “The longer the killer robots issue stays stuck in the current forum, the more time developers of autonomous weapons systems have to hone new technologies and achieve commercial viability.”

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