Twenty countries and the European Union issued a joint declaration on Monday calling for international regulatory mechanisms to ensure that artificial intelligence remains strictly under human control. The coalition, which includes Germany, South Africa, Canada, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, and Singapore, proposed establishing a dedicated multilateral oversight body to enforce global technical benchmarks. The document was released ahead of high-level diplomatic deliberations at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Signatories stressed that human direction must remain absolute.
The declaration, released through the office of Finnish President Alexander Stubb, directs governments and technology corporations to align development trajectories with international humanitarian norms. Signatories warned that state authorities must address catastrophic risks without widening the digital divide separating developing economies from technological benefits. The framework establishes procedures for sharing documentation regarding severe security incidents and proposes a permanent institution tasked with verifying compliance whenever frontier models surpass specific computational thresholds.
High-ranking signatories to the initiative include German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Kenyan President William Ruto, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.
The United States and China, the two dominant computational powers, did not endorse the text. United States President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to confer on bilateral technology policies during a White House summit on Thursday, marking their third direct encounter in under twelve months.
Both Washington and Beijing have systematically dismissed appeals from researchers to decelerate algorithmic development. Diplomatic representatives confirmed that the text remains open for accession by other sovereign states.
