Bonnie Docherty

Technology allowing a pre-programmed robot to shoot to kill, or a tank to fire at a target with no human involvement, is only years away, experts say. A new report called Monday for a ban on such "killer robots."..."Machines have long served as instruments of war, but historically humans have directed how they are used," said Bonnie Docherty, senior arms division researcher at Human Rights Watch, in a statement. "Now there is a real threat that humans would relinquish their control and delegate life-and-death decisions to machines."

Two international arms control groups on Monday issued a report that called for maintaining human control over a new generation of weapons that are increasingly capable of targeting and attacking without the involvement of people. The report, which came from Human Rights Watch and the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic at the opening of a weeklong United Nations meeting on autonomous weapons in Geneva, potentially challenges an emerging United States military strategy that will count on technology advantages and increasingly depend on weapons systems that blend humans and machines...The ability to recall a weapon may be a crucial point in any ban on autonomous weapons, said Bonnie Docherty, the author of the report and a lecturer on law and senior clinical instructor at the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School. Weapons specialists said the exact capabilities of systems like L.R.A.S.M. are often protected as classified information. “We urge states to provide more information on specific technology so the international community can better judge what type and level of control should be required,” Ms. Docherty said.

After researching the devastating humanitarian effects of the deadly cluster munitions used in Afghanistan in 2002, Bonnie Docherty joined a worldwide campaign to eliminate them. Six years after she started her probe, cluster bombs were banned. Her investigation on the use of cluster munitions in Afghanistan, and later in Iraq and Lebanon, was highly influential in a 2008 treaty signed by 117 countries banning these weapons. For Docherty, a lecturer on law and a senior instructor at the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, the battle to protect civilians from unnecessary harm continues. Last month, Docherty traveled to Geneva to advocate for stronger regulations on incendiary devices, which she calls “exceptionally cruel weapons” that have been used in Syria, Libya, and Ukraine.

An op-ed by Bonnie Docherty: Incendiary weapons inflict almost unrivaled cruelty on their victims. Photos taken after an incendiary weapon attack on a Syrian school show the charred bodies of children, who must have experienced unimaginable agony. The weapons cause excruciatingly painful burns, and treatment for survivors requires sloughing off dead skin, which has been likened to being flayed alive. While individuals often react to accounts of such suffering with horror, government efforts to minimize the harm from these weapons by strengthening international law have been unacceptably slow. ...Over the past two years Human Rights Watch has documented new use of incendiary weapons in Syria and Ukraine, and it is investigating allegations of use in Libya and Yemen in 2015. A report [PDF] recently released by Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic provides evidence of these attacks, along with a five-year review of developments on the issue and recommendations for next steps.

A leading human rights body is calling for all governments to step up formal international negotiations in order to pre-emptively ban killer robots, as the annual UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) debates use of autonomous weapons for the third year in a row. Human Rights Watch has published a report urging nations to turn the informal experts meetings that have been held over the past two years at the CCW conference into formal negotiations in order to ban the technology before too much investment is put into it...I think there's a recognition amongst member nations that this is a problem, that these autonomous weapons could be developed in years, not decades. There's also diplomatic pressure as next year there's the fifth year review conference. Every five years this review is held at the CCW, and it is often used to initiate formal negotiations and adopt new protocols," Bonnie Docherty, a senior researcher in the Arms Division at Human Rights Watch, told IBTimes UK...The more states invest in this technology, the less likely they will be to give it up," said Docherty, who also lectures in international human rights law at Harvard University.

An op-ed by Bonnie Docherty:  Such fully autonomous weapons, or “killer robots,” are under development in several countries. But the robots’ use of force would undermine the fundamental legal and moral principle that people should be held responsible for their wrongdoing. Countries and nongovernmental groups around the world have been working for two years now to figure out how to deal with these weapons before they are in production. In April, representatives from 90 countries met at the United Nations in Geneva for their second round of talks on what to do about “lethal autonomous weapons systems.”

An op-ed by Bonnie Docherty. What would happen if countries took a step beyond remote-controlled drones and used weapons that targeted and killed people on their own, without any human intervention? Who would be responsible if one of these weapons made a fatal mistake, and who could be punished? The answer is no one. Such fully autonomous weapons, or “killer robots,” are under development in several countries. But the robots’ use of force would undermine the fundamental legal and moral principle that people should be held responsible for their wrongdoing.

…Governments must impose a preemptive ban on fully autonomous weapons before it’s too late, even though they don’t yet exist, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Harvard Law School said in a report released Monday...“We found these weapons could violate the most basic human rights—the right to life, the right to a remedy and the principle of dignity,” HRW researcher and Harvard Law School lecturer Bonnie Docherty wrote in an email. “These rights are the basis for all others.”

According to a new report by Harvard Law School's International Human Right's Clinic, civilian victims are still struggling in the absence of effective help from the government seven years after the end of Nepal's armed conflict.