A woman holds up a sign while taking part in a demonstration about the use of robots by the San Francisco Police Department outside of City Hall in San Francisco,, on 5 December, 2022. (Keystone/AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Killer robots close to breaching ‘moral red line’, warn UN and ICRC amid renewed push for treaty. States will meet in Geneva this week to discuss new rules to rein in the development and use of lethal autonomous weapons, amid mounting concerns that humans could soon become the target of “killer robots”.

NEW UN LABOUR CHIEF WANTED. Nominations for the International Labour Organization’s next director general close today. Current UN labour chief Gilbert Houngbo faces so far Spain’s labour minister Yolanda Díaz for the post, making it the first time an incumbent seeking a second term is challenged.

💸Crisis at hand. The election comes as the ILO faces a major funding crisis. With at least 20 per cent of this year’s budget going unpaid, chiefly driven by Washington withholding payments, the organisation is bracing for more possible job cuts. (Geneva Solutions)

Houngbo wants to continue his reform programme and steer the organisation through the crisis. Díaz, a left-wing politician, proposes a change of direction, including drafting a Global Charter of Minimum Labour Rights and governance reform. (El País)

🤝Political stakes. Ultimately, it will all come down to how much support each of the contenders can rally. Houngbo is reportedly trying to sway the US by keeping open the possibility of appointing a US-linked candidate as his deputy after he froze last year the appointment of a US national over Washington’s unwillingness to pay. As its biggest financial contributor, the US has considerable weight in an election. (El País) Houngbo can also count on the backing of the African group and unions, an informed diplomatic source told us.

Díaz, for her part, is said to enjoy European support, which also accounts for a significant share of the ILO’s budget. But given that Spain backed the request to the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on the right to strike and argued in favour of its protection, Díaz will still have to win over the Employers’ Group, which opposed the move. Her fraught relationship with Spain’s main employers’ federation could further complicate matters.

If elected, Díaz would become the first woman to lead the ILO.

DIGITAL HEALTH. This week, governments, international organisations, technical experts and the private sector are coming together at the World Health Organization for the Global Digital Collaboration Conference in Geneva to explore how digital health credentials and wallets can become more trusted and interoperable across borders.

🗃️Health records in your pocket. Rather than storing health credentials and records inside one hospital or national health system, digital health wallets or apps allow people to carry verified credentials with them digitally in their phones. But this raises questions about data privacy, patient confidentiality and cyber risks.

🛡️Safety first. To ensure health information is secure, portable and trusted as people move between systems, the WHO launched in 2023 the Global Digital Health Certification Network, an open-source public infrastructure that allows countries to share health information like vaccine certificates through the WHO without giving the organisation or any other intermediary access to the underlying data.

The WHO says its network already connects more than 80 countries and nearly 2 billion people. This week’s conference will focus on real-world experiences and cases, addressing challenges such as verifying who issued a credential and ensuring different systems can recognise it.

— Agostina Cerisoli & Michelle Langrand

Todd Steggerda was sworn in as US ambassador to the UN in Geneva by state secretary Marco Rubio on 24 August 2026. (US mission in Geneva)

WASHINGTON'S NEW TOP DIPLOMAT FOR GENEVA. The US permanent mission will finally have an ambassador again after a 20-month-long vacancy and a drastic U-turn in US foreign policy. Nominated by the Trump administration last February, Todd Steggerda was narrowly confirmed by the US senate earlier this month, 51 to 47. He was sworn in last Monday and is expected in Geneva soon.

CV. Steggerda is a Washington-based Republican lawyer who served as chief counsel to the McCain‑Palin campaign in 2008. Before that, he was a naval F/A‑18 pilot, including in the Balkans in the 1990s.

Reform, China and America First. At his April confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he was asked whether he would recommend the US leave any more UN bodies. He said he didn’t have any names at this stage.

His priorities: defending American public and business interests, including through senior appointments, and pushing the US reform agenda, including on compensation but also in humanitarian agencies, with which Washington has been redrawing its terms of cooperation.

Pressed about China’s growing influence in the multilateral system, he pointed to the hiring of Chinese nationals across the system and efforts to embed Chinese tech in international standards as key concerns. Steggerda accused some UN technical agencies of becoming “overtly political”.

— ML

A comic book aims to teach Swiss students about AI and the role international Geneva. The 48-page comic book, titled Critical Code and sponsored by the Foundation for Geneva, has been distributed in Geneva’s secondary schools and across 15 other Swiss cantons.