Chester Sam­bra­no

CARI­COM IM­PACS ( Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty) says on Wednes­day a his­tor­i­cal CARI­COM De­c­la­ra­tion on Au­tonomous Weapons Sys­tems was is­sued which called for the "ur­gent pur­suit of an in­ter­na­tion­al legal­ly bind­ing in­stru­ment, in­cor­po­rat­ing pro­hi­bi­tions and reg­u­la­tions on au­tonomous weapons sys­tems".

In a state­ment CARI­COM IM­PACS said the De­c­la­ra­tion on Au­tonomous Weapons Sys­tems re­sult­ed from a two-day re­gion­al Con­fer­ence on the Hu­man Im­pacts of Au­tonomous Weapons in Port of Spain, Trinidad and To­ba­go, on 5-6 Sep­tem­ber 2023.

It said the De­c­la­ra­tion rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant step for the Re­gion in ad­vanc­ing CARI­COM's po­si­tion re­gard­ing au­tonomous weapons sys­tems.

The Con­fer­ence was host­ed by the CARI­COM (IM­PACS) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Trinidad and To­ba­go, So­ka Gakkai In­ter­na­tion­al and Stop Killer Ro­bots.

It said the world is rapid­ly chang­ing, and emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, in­clud­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) are quick­ly grow­ing and ex­pand­ing, trans­form­ing all ar­eas of so­ci­ety.

It ex­plained that AI and ro­bot­ics are rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing law en­force­ment, se­cu­ri­ty, armed con­flicts, war­fare and weapons sys­tems, in­clud­ing the emer­gence of au­tonomous weapons sys­tems.

"Such weapon tech­nolo­gies may have detri­men­tal im­pli­ca­tions for CARI­COM states' na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, rais­ing ques­tions about the pro­lif­er­a­tion of these weapons to non-state ac­tors, in­clud­ing crim­i­nal groups, gangs and ter­ror­ists" the state­ment said.