After more than a decade of negotiations, 128 countries reached a landmark agreement late on Friday night in Geneva, adopting the first internationally agreed text defining lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) — what critics call "killer robots." The agreement, announced on Saturday by Dutch Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen, was reached within the UN's Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) operating under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), a long-standing international framework governing the use of specific arms. The Netherlands has been leading the talks.

The agreed text, which has not yet been made public, establishes a common definition of autonomous weapons — systems that can identify, select and engage targets using artificial intelligence without direct human intervention. It also addresses how international humanitarian law applies to such weapons and, critically, affirms the need for meaningful human control over their use. Dutch disarmament ambassador Robert in den Bosch, who led the process, described the final hours as tense: agreement came close to 3 a.m., with the entire deal hanging at one point on a single word in the draft text, and one negotiator requesting a five-minute break to consult his home ministry before finally giving his assent.

The urgency behind the talks is underscored by rapid developments on the battlefield. Autonomous weapon systems are already being deployed in conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan and elsewhere, with machines increasingly making life-and-death decisions. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has warned that "the unconstrained development and use of autonomous weapon systems pose serious legal, ethical and humanitarian challenges," and — alongside civil society groups — has called for legally binding international rules that would prohibit unpredictable autonomous weapons and strictly regulate all others.

The agreement was not without controversy. Campaign group Stop Killer Robots, an international coalition, welcomed the consensus but expressed disappointment that the text had been significantly weakened in its final hours. The United States, Russia, India and Israel were identified by observers as among the strongest opponents of moving toward binding negotiations. In den Bosch acknowledged the result was a compromise that no country was entirely happy with, but stressed that the strength of the agreement lay in the 128 states standing behind it.

The text is non-binding, but it sets the stage for a potentially decisive moment in November, when states party to the CCW will meet and decide whether to launch formal negotiations toward a full international treaty — a process comparable to those that produced the landmark bans on landmines and cluster munitions. Campaigning governments including Brazil, Ireland and Norway are expected to push for negotiations to begin. Whatever the outcome, diplomats and advocacy groups caution that any treaty process could itself take many more years to complete.