Correction (19 October 2026): An earlier version of this article described events that we could not verify. It has been rewritten from verifiable sources, which are linked in the text.

We have found no record of an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on autonomous weapons in September 2026, or of a Security Council draft resolution on the subject. The real story unfolded in Geneva. In the early hours of 5 September 2026, after an all-night session, the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), which works under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), closed three years of work by adopting a report by consensus. Human Rights Watch called the text "significantly watered down" but still a sufficient basis for treaty negotiations. Whether those negotiations begin is now a decision for the CCW's Seventh Review Conference, which meets in Geneva from 16 to 20 November 2026.

The Geneva session: what was agreed

The GGE's second and final session of 2026 ran from 31 August to 4 September at the Palais des Nations. It was chaired by Ambassador Robert in den Bosch, the Netherlands' Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament. According to the Permanent Representation of Italy, negotiations ran through the night of Friday 4 September, and the CCW's 128 States Parties reached consensus on the basic elements for defining lethal autonomous weapons and their use. The group had been set up at the CCW's Fifth Review Conference in 2016, and its current mandate, agreed in 2023, was to formulate, by consensus, elements of a possible instrument without deciding in advance what form that instrument should take (overview).

Human Rights Watch summarised the adopted text as follows. On the positive side, the report:

  • characterises lethal autonomous weapons systems, which gives states a shared working description of what is being regulated;
  • affirms that human control and judgment are required for compliance with international law; and
  • includes restrictions on systems that cannot comply with that law.

On the other side, much was cut. HRW reports that the final text drops references to design and development, narrows its scope from international law generally to international humanitarian law only, removes the reference to ethical considerations, and deletes references to predictability, reliability, explainability and traceability. HRW attributes these changes to Russia and the United States, which it says insisted on amendments to widely supported provisions.

France, in a statement of 10 September 2026, welcomed the "draft final report" as a significant step towards an international framework, saying it helps define the systems concerned, sets out common principles and provides for prohibitions on certain systems, together with measures on control, risk reduction and the allocation of responsibilities.

The report is not a treaty and binds no one. Its value is that all CCW parties, including the sceptics, accepted a common vocabulary and the principle that human control and judgment are a condition of lawful use.

Who wants negotiations, and who resisted

The divide is not between "the EU and the Global South" and the military powers, as the earlier version claimed; France, for instance, backs banning fully autonomous systems and regulating the rest, not a total ban. The measurable figure is the number of states calling for negotiations. HRW, citing the Stop Killer Robots campaign, reports that 76 states have now expressed support for moving to negotiations, 70 of them High Contracting Parties to the CCW, which HRW notes is a majority of the Convention's parties. Because the CCW works by consensus, a majority alone cannot open negotiations.

The UN Secretary-General and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are pressing in the same direction. In a joint appeal of 25 August 2026, António Guterres and Mirjana Spoljaric called on states to negotiate a legally binding instrument with clear prohibitions and restrictions, and described the November Review Conference as the clearest path to that decision. UN News reported that they propose prohibiting two categories: weapons whose effects operators cannot predict, and weapons that target humans. Their first joint appeal, in October 2023, had asked states to conclude negotiations by 2026. That deadline will not be met.

How far such systems are already used in combat is unclear. UN News described claims that fully autonomous, AI-guided drones are on the battlefield as unconfirmed, and Swissinfo reported that UN and ICRC officials could not confirm at a Geneva press briefing whether such weapons had ever been used, while noting media reports of AI-enhanced drones in Ukraine.

The legal questions

The precise question is not whether AI "violates the Geneva Conventions" but whether a weapon that selects and engages targets without human intervention can be used in compliance with the rules on the conduct of hostilities in international humanitarian law (IHL), codified mainly in Additional Protocol I of 1977 (AP I).

Distinction

Article 48 of AP I requires parties to a conflict to distinguish at all times between civilians and combatants and to direct operations only against military objectives (text summarised here). Article 51(4) prohibits indiscriminate attacks, including those using a means of warfare that cannot be directed at a specific military objective. The difficulty with autonomous systems is that, as the ICRC's 2021 position puts it, the user does not choose, or even know, the specific target. Swissinfo summarises the UN and ICRC concern that such systems may be unable to tell, in real time, a combatant from a protected person such as a wounded soldier.

Proportionality

Article 51(5)(b) prohibits an attack expected to cause incidental civilian harm that would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. This is an evaluative judgment made in context, and it is made for each attack. If a system is activated hours before it engages, over a wide area, the person who activated it may not know the circumstances in which force will actually be used.

Precautions

Article 57 requires those who plan or decide upon an attack to do everything feasible to verify that targets are military objectives and to take all feasible precautions in the choice of means and methods of attack. The ICRC's proposals respond directly to this: limits on the types of target, on duration, geographic scope and scale of use, and requirements for human supervision and the ability to intervene and deactivate.

Article 36: the weapons review

Before a weapon reaches the battlefield, Article 36 of AP I obliges each party, in the study, development, acquisition or adoption of a new weapon, means or method of warfare, to determine whether its use would be prohibited in some or all circumstances. The ICRC's Guide to the Legal Review of New Weapons (2006) notes that Article 36 does not say how the review is to be done, and argues that the duty arguably applies to all states, whether or not they are party to AP I. For autonomous systems, the review is where predictability would be tested, which is why the deletion of references to predictability from the GGE text matters.

The two-tier approach

The two-tier approach means prohibiting some autonomous weapons outright and regulating the rest. The ICRC's 2021 position recommends prohibiting unpredictable systems and systems designed or used to apply force against persons, and regulating all others. According to Stop Killer Robots, the 2025 resolution, as adopted in the General Assembly's First Committee in November 2025, notes the Secretary-General's call for a legally binding instrument based on a two-tier approach of prohibitions and regulations.

The General Assembly track

The General Assembly is the actual New York forum on this issue; its resolutions are not binding. The first resolution on LAWS was adopted in December 2023 by 152 votes to 4, with 11 abstentions. Resolution 79/62 of 2 December 2024 passed by 166 to 3 with 15 abstentions and convened open informal consultations in New York in 2025 (HRW). Resolution 80/57 of 1 December 2025 was adopted by 164 to 6, with 7 abstentions; the states voting against were Belarus, Burundi, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Israel, the Russian Federation and the United States (voting record). That resolution calls on CCW parties to work towards completing the set of elements for an instrument, which is the work the GGE has now finished.

Türkiye and the Republic of Korea

Türkiye abstained on the 2023 text in the First Committee and in the General Assembly votes on resolution 79/62 in 2024 and resolution 80/57 in 2025. Explaining its 2023 abstention, Türkiye's representative said the final text did not address some of its concerns and that the CCW is the right forum for these systems (UN meetings coverage). Türkiye is not party to AP I; in a submission to the UN it noted that views differ on how far the Protocol's provisions reflect customary law. The ICRC guide nonetheless treats the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks and the proportionality rule as customary law, binding on all states, and considers that the duty to review new weapons arguably applies to all states too.

The Republic of Korea voted for the 2023 text, saying the GGE should serve as a central forum for discussing LAWS, and voted for resolution 80/57 in 2025. Seoul also hosted the second summit on Responsible AI in the Military Domain (REAIM) on 9 and 10 September 2024, which ended with a non-binding "Blueprint for Action" endorsed by 61 countries, including South Korea, the United States and Ukraine; China did not endorse it (Carnegie Council). Korea is a party to AP I.

What happens in November

The Seventh CCW Review Conference meets from 16 to 20 November 2026 (Permanent Representation of Italy) and will decide on next steps. France has said it wants the conference to adopt a new negotiating mandate for the group, based on the elements in the report, and that it will work towards a mandate that can command consensus. HRW calls the conference "a decisive moment". The conference may open negotiations, extend discussions without a negotiating mandate, or fail to agree. Because the CCW decides by consensus, a single state can in principle block a negotiating mandate.

Burhan Doğuş Ayparlar's View

In our view, the most important sentence in the Geneva report is the one that survived the cuts: that human control and judgment are required for compliance with international law. The rules on distinction, proportionality and precautions were written for people who make judgments about specific attacks. A system that selects and engages targets on its own does not remove those obligations; it moves them back in time, to the commander who decides where, when and for how long the system will operate, and to the state that reviewed and fielded it.

That is also where the accountability problem lies. Criminal responsibility for war crimes generally turns on what a person intended or knew, and command responsibility on a failure to prevent or punish. If a system behaves in a way nobody could predict, it becomes hard to find the person whose mental state matches the harm. Predictability, reliability and traceability are what make it possible to say afterwards who knew what; without them, responsibility diffuses.

For Türkiye, which is not party to AP I, the practical point is that Article 36-style reviews are good practice and arguably required by customary law in any event. A published outline of its national review procedure would strengthen Türkiye's voice in a forum it has itself called the right one. For Korea, which has invested diplomatically in the REAIM process, November is a test of whether non-binding blueprints translate into support for binding rules. Whatever the Review Conference decides, the legal baseline does not change: existing IHL applies in full, and states cannot delegate their obligations to software.

Sources

This article is general information on international law and policy as of 19 October 2026. It is not legal advice.