Country: The Netherlands

Committee: DISEC (the first committee)

Topic A: Artificial intelligence: A treat to global security

Delegate name: Hajrah basit

“Robots could destabilize world through war and unemployment,” says UN Today. When
artificial intelligence (hereinafter, referred to as AI) and robotics comes together, there are two
different outcomes that can occur. On the one hand, one can see immeasurable social, economic
and political improvements to our society. On the other hand, the military uses these tools to
create new weapons of mass destructions (hereinafter, lethal autonomous weapon systems or
LAWS) rendering nuclear obsolete. Recognizing the threat to international peace and security
caused by lethal autonomous weapons, 116 founders of robotics and artificial intelligence
companies from 26 countries released an open letter urging the United Nations to ban lethal
autonomous weapons systems.

Netherlands is one many countries who are supporting with other nations on abolishing
killer robots.The Netherlands does not support negotiating new international law and regards
meaningful human control as good programming in the pre-deployment phase as sufficient to
address concerns. Meanwhile calls to retain human control over the use of force continue to
mount. The Netherlands are building new robots that are safe and reliable but they strongly
disagree with the making of killer robots.“Killer robots – autonomous weapons systems that can
identify and destroy targets in the absence of human control – should be strictly monitored to
prevent violations of international or humanitarian law, nations from around the world demanded
on Thursday” said the Netherlands government.

The Netherlands and other countries called for “meaningful human control” of lethal
weapons to be enshrined in international law, although the meeting also admitted that the precise
definition of that principle had yet to be clarified.The Netherlands and among other states, lined
up at a special UN meeting in Geneva to warn of the potential dangers of this rapidly advancing
technology. Several countries spoke of the need for ongoing scrutiny to ensure that the weapons
conformed to the Geneva conventions’ rules on proportionality in war. The Netherlands also
signed the treaty/organization called “NGO” and ‘PXA’ that are working to preemptively ban
fully autonomous weapons.Netherlands would also seek to come up with ideas as to how
advances in the field could be exploited to help achieve the UN’s targets.

The EFA Group recommendation to pay special attention to technological progress in the
field of the weaponisation of robotics and, in particular, on armed robots was included in a
resolution endorsing a European Parliament report to the Council for the 73rd session of the
United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). The campaign if, conduct outreach at UNGA First
Committee on Disarmament and International Security, will further help to solve this issue and
prevents the production of killer robots not only in Netherlands but throughout the world.