Stop Killer Robots and Etica Funds – Responsible Investments urge investors to support the Investor Statement on Autonomous Weapons and take a stand against the digital dehumanisation and automated harm produced and exacerbated by autonomous weapons systems.
Investor Statement
We the undersigned, as investors, asset owners, and asset managers, are deeply concerned about the ethical, legal, and humanitarian risks posed by the development and use of autonomous weapons systems.
We call on government leaders around the world to launch negotiations for a new international treaty on autonomous weapons systems to ensure human control in the use of force and to prohibit machines that target people, reducing us to objects, stereotypes, and data points. Machines should not make life and death decisions.
Support the Investor Statement on Autonomous Weapons
Sign the statementWho should sign the statement?
- Financial institutions: Banks, pension and superannuation funds, insurance and reinsurance companies and intermediaries, sovereign wealth funds, investment managers, asset consultants and advisors.
- Philanthropic foundations: Corporate, private and family foundations.
- University endowments.
- Other organisations participating in lending, insurance or investment, and not mentioned in the sub-categories mentioned above.
For any queries, please contact [email protected]
Who has signed the statement?
List of 63 signatories with aggregate AUM exceeding USD 251 BN:
- 4TIMING S.I.M. S.p.A.
- Adasina Social Capital
- Alternative Bank Schweiz AG
- Banca Etica
- Boussard & Gavaudan
- Chevedden Corporate Governance
- CIID (Centro Italiano Interreligioso per il Dialogo) (12 members)
- Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace
- Dominican Sisters of Sparkill
- EB-SIM
- ESG-AM
- Ethius Invest
- Ethos Engagement Pool International
- Ethos Engagement Services (2 clients)
- Ethos Foundation
- Etica Funds – Responsible Investments
- FEBEA – European Federation of Ethical and Alternative Banks and Financiers
- Fondazione Finanza Etica
- Forma Futura Invest AG
- Friends Fiduciary Corporation
- Friends Provident Foundation
- Fundación Finanzas Éticas
- Future Group
- Global Alliance for Banking on Values
- GLS Bank
- GLS Investment Management GmbH
- IMPact SGR
- Iniziativa turistica no profit
- Inyova AG
- ISGAM AG
- Maryknoll Sisters
- Mutual Medica, Mutualidad de Previsión Social
- Newground Social Investment
- Nia Impact Capital
- NorthStar Asset Management
- Ökoworld
- Praxis Funds
- regenerative ltd
- School Sisters of Notre Dame Collective Investment Fund
- SharePower Responsible Investing
- Sisters of Mary Reparatrix
- Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia
- Sisters of the Humility of Mary
- Socially Responsible Investment Coalition
- Storebrand Asset Management
- Sustainable Value Investors
- Tareno AG
- Triodos Bank
- Triodos Investment Management
- Unitarian Universalist Association Common Endowment Fund
- Zevin Asset Management
Updated: June 2026 (Download a list of current signatories)
Background
Autonomous Weapons are weapons that detect and apply force to a target based on sensor inputs, rather than direct human inputs. After the human user activates the weapons system, there is a period of time where the weapons system can apply force to a target without direct human approval. This means what or who will be attacked, and where and when that attack happens, are determined by sensor processing, not by humans.
Digital dehumanisation is the process whereby humans are reduced to data, which is then used to make decisions and/or take actions that affect their lives.This process can deprive people of dignity, demean their humanity, and remove or replace human involvement or responsibility with automated decision-making technology.
Automated harm occurs when such decision-making systems negatively impact human safety. The potential automated harm arising from autonomous weapons includes injury or death. As
such, the digital dehumanisation caused by autonomous weapons is at the severe end of the scale of harm caused by automated decision-making or autonomous technologies.
The adoption of an international treaty to prohibit and regulate autonomous weapons systems will be a crucial step towards supporting the development of legal and other norms to ensure meaningful human control over the use of force, oppose digital dehumanisation, and reduce automated harm.
About Stop Killer Robots
The Stop Killer Robots campaign is an international coalition of over 300 non-governmental organisations in over 75 countries that seeks to counter threats to humanity and human dignity through the adoption of a new international treaty to prohibit and regulate autonomous weapons systems (AWS). We support the development of legal and other norms that ensure meaningful human control over the use of force, counter digital dehumanisation, and reduce automated harm.
Website: https://www.stopkillerrobots.org/
About Etica Funds – Responsible Investments
Etica Funds is an Italian asset management company that exclusively offers ethical and responsible mutual funds designed to “represent the values of ethical finance in financial markets and focus the attention of the public on socially responsible investment and corporate social responsibility” (Art. 4 of Etica Funds articles of association). Etica Funds was founded in 2000 based on the belief that analyzing issuers (businesses and countries) from an ESG viewpoint can deliver value in terms of risk adjusted performance.
Website: https://www.eticasgr.com/en
Risks with Autonomous Weapons
One of the most critical aspects linked to the use of autonomous weapons concerns their compatibility with international humanitarian law (IHL), which governs the conduct of armed conflict and imposes fundamental obligations for the protection of civilians. Two key principles of international humanitarian law – distinction and proportionality – are particularly important in the context of autonomous technologies. Another legal aspect concerns the issue of responsibility.
– Distinction: the principle of distinction requires the ability to distinguish between military targets and civilian objects, and to recognise those who, even if combatants, no longer represent a threat (hors de combat). The ability to interpret and contextualise is typically human and cannot be reproduced by algorithms.
– Proportionality: the principle of proportionality prohibits attacks where the expected collateral damage is excessive in relation to the tangible and direct military advantage. This evaluation, by nature, requires moral and cognitive capacity (empathy, understanding of the context, experience), characteristics which are not found in machines.
– Responsibility: who is responsible if autonomous weapons systems hit an illegitimate target or causes civilian victims? Machines, which lack moral and legal agency, cannot be held responsible. At the same time, it may be unfair to attribute the blame to a commander or programmer, especially if the weapons system was operating beyond their meaningful control. This opens a dangerous “responsibility gap”, which puts the very system of international humanitarian law into crisis and undermines the principle of accountability in armed conflict.
Autonomous weapons systems also pose technical and operating issues if systems become too complex for human users to understand and could thus produce unpredictable and inexplicable effects. Unpredictability and inexplicability are main causes for concern, due to the potential consequences not only for civilians, but for upholding the rules of conflict and overall strategic stability. Some of the underlying factors of errors include:
– Algorithms based on incomplete or biased datasets, then programmed into autonomous weapons systems run the risk of biased technologies making determinations related to life and death.
– Sensitivity to anomalous or unforeseen inputs, which makes them vulnerable not only to spontaneous malfunctioning, but to intentional manipulation by hostile counterparties
– Complex and dynamic scenarios such as war further increase the margins for error.
The unpredictability of autonomous weapons is, therefore, a structural characteristic, not a mere temporary anomaly.
In ethical terms, ascribing the decision over life or death to a machine is a violation of human dignity, where the victim is not given the possibility to be recognised as a person and is instead reduced to a mere object, numerical data, or a set of coordinates. This issue cannot be solved by technological progress: even the most precise and reliable system would undermine human dignity as it reduces people to data points, which could result in injury or death. Therefore, even with minimal margins for error, the absence of moral capacity makes these systems ethically unacceptable.
With the use of autonomous weapons systems, technology is at risk of becoming an incentivising factor in conflict, raising serious geopolitical and strategic concerns
– Global instability: the possibility of conducting war operations without risking the life of soldiers can lower the threshold for the use of force, making war more “acceptable” and frequent, with wide-scale destabilising effects. In this sense, technology does not act as a deterrent but is at risk of becoming an incentivising factor
– Automated escalation of conflict: algorithmic interactions between autonomous systems can
generate unpredictable results that are difficult to control, which may result in escalation without human control (with the risk of friendly fire, incorrect targeting or cyber-attacks).
– Arms race: autonomous weapons systems have relatively low costs and less need for personnel, factors which facilitate their purchase even by non-state players or authoritarian regimes.
Etica Funds report on Autonomous Weapons
Stop Killer Robots' policy
