The World Council of Churches is one of 226 countries that signed a document calling on technology companies and governments to “cease the supply” of artificial intelligence systems used in “military kill chains” and “take all necessary measures” to prevent violations of international humanitarian law and human rights.
Valerio Palombaro
War, “accelerated” by artificial intelligence (AI), is increasingly becoming an “enabler of rapid and large-scale killing.” At the same time, there is currently no “technical or procedural solution that could prevent the deadly and catastrophic consequences” arising from the challenges these developments pose to international law.
Against this alarming backdrop, the World Council of Churches (WCC), along with 225 other signatories, including representatives of NGOs, associations, experts and technology companies, endorsed a joint declaration against the use of AI in warfare.
United Nations Conference in Geneva
The declaration specifically calls on companies and governments developing AI technology to “cease the supply” of artificial intelligence systems intended for use in “military kill chains” and “take all necessary steps to ensure that other AI systems they provide do not cause or contribute to violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law.”
The declaration was signed at a conference organized by the United Nations Secretariat for Disarmament on AI in the military field and its impact on international peace and security, held in Geneva from June 15 to 17.
The gathering came just weeks after Pope Leo XIV said in an encyclical: Magnifica Humanitascalled on the world to “disarm AI.”
Risk of “diluting” human responsibility
According to the declaration, all companies, including those that contract with government military agencies, “must take all possible steps to ensure that their products and services do not cause, contribute to, or are directly linked to human rights violations or international crimes.”
Furthermore, “if an entity cannot prevent or meaningfully mitigate such risks, it should not enter into or perform such a contract.”
Citing media reports and official statements from the Department of Defense, the declaration notes that “the rapid generation of targets by AI tools has enabled an increase in the speed, scale, intensity, and destructiveness of the U.S. attack on Iran.” He added that a similar assessment could be made of the systems employed by the Israeli military.
Such technologies dilute “human responsibility in life-or-death decisions,” the declaration argues, and “could serve to conceal international crimes under the guise of algorithmic objectivity while simultaneously avoiding accountability.”
inhuman drifting
“Real-world deployments of AI show that it is, in fact, facilitating more violent, inhumane, and destructive methods of war,” the 226 signatories said. These include international organizations such as Amnesty International and a number of local organizations.
“We are particularly concerned that the use of large-scale language models (LLMs) for target generation and prioritization is driving military actors into forms of warfare in which the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, including distinction, proportionality and precaution, are not, and perhaps not fully, respected,” the declaration continues.
Given the speed and scale of these technologies, and the unreliability, bias, and often illegal sources of input data, the signatories warn that such systems risk facilitating human rights violations, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
Moreover, the opaque circumstances surrounding their use seriously undermine the possibility of imposing moral or legal liability in the event of a mistake.
Meaningful human control
The declaration further argues that even if the AI systems used for targeting do not make the final decision to kill, they risk becoming a mechanism that automatically authorizes mass killings, as they rely on a false sense of objectivity and may displace human responsibility and due diligence.
As a result, it may contribute to the acceleration and rationalization of mass murder.
These systems also automate dehumanization by “reducing life-or-death issues to simple chat prompts.” The signatories stress that the decision to take a human life carries significant moral and legal weight and should never be reduced to accepting or rejecting recommendations generated by AI systems.
When militaries rely on AI to identify targets at such speed and scale that human inspection becomes a mere formality, “mass atrocities can and will occur” in direct violation of the precautionary principle enshrined in international humanitarian law.
Improving accountability and transparency
The declaration, signed in Geneva, calls on technology companies to refrain from “concluding or performing contracts with military institutions or armed groups that may violate international law, including human rights violations or atrocity crimes.”
Meanwhile, governments are being urged to “stop the use of AI tools, including large-scale language models, in military targeting operations and ensure compliance with international humanitarian law and international human rights law.”
It also calls for “ensuring transparency regarding the current use of AI in hostilities.”
