U.S. drone signature strikes: An often illegal “killing machine”, UCLA Burkle Center. Home Events Research News Multimedia Internships Funding Resources Annual Report Support About Us 11353 Bunche Hall Box 951487 Los Angeles, CA 90095-1487 Campus Mail Code: 148703 Tel: (310) 206-6365 Fax: (310) 206-3555 Email: burkle@international.ucla.edu Sign up to join our listserv.
UN-Special-Rapporteur-Extrajudicial-Christof-Heyns-Report-Drones. Living Under Drones. This section provides an overview of the debate about the legality of the US targeted killing program and drone campaign in Pakistan under both international[1] and US domestic law.
The section is intended for a non-legal audience, and thus should not be seen as a comprehensive analysis of the complexities of international legal doctrine. It outlines the legal issues regarding: The US government’s extreme reluctance to provide details about particular strikes or the targeted killing program in general has impeded much-needed democratic debate about the legality and wisdom of US policies and practices, and stymied understanding about their actual impacts.
Article 2(4) of the U.N. Pakistani consent: Some analysts, citing information released by Wikileaks,[7] maintain that Pakistan had, at some prior point, tacitly supported drone strikes.[8] It is not known whether Pakistan continues to consent privately to the program today. Orr-final.pdf. Legality-of-US-Drone-Strikes-in-Pakistan. The Rise of the Machines. 45CaseWResJIntlL1%262.11.Article.Sterio. Civilian Use. The use of armed drones must comply with laws. 10-05-2013 Interview The use of drones in armed conflicts has increased significantly in recent years, raising humanitarian, legal and other concerns.
Peter Maurer, the president of the ICRC, discusses the issues at stake and the importance of respecting international law. Are these weapons lawful? Are they compatible with the obligation to take constant care to spare civilians? Who should be held responsible for possible violations of the law? Are armed drones lawful? Under international humanitarian law – the rules of war, i.e. the set of laws governing armed conflicts – drones are not expressly prohibited, nor are they considered to be inherently indiscriminate or perfidious. It is worth pointing out that not all drones are actually armed and used to fight. However, most of the current debate has been generated by the use of armed drones for combat operations, in Afghanistan, Gaza or Yemen for example.
International law ‘not equipped’ to deal with drone attacks. By Rebecca Lowe International humanitarian law is inadequate for dealing with modern forms of warfare such as drone strikes, according to leading experts in the field.
The US has faced mounting criticism over its unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia in recent months. Reports estimate that between 550 and 4,000 unarmed civilians have been killed in operations since 2002. John Shattuck, US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour under President Clinton, believes the law of nations is ill-equipped to address the rules of drone combat in counter-terrorism operations.
‘We are living in a very volatile and rapidly changing world when it comes to the means by which warfare is conducted,’ he tells IBA Global Insight. Shattuck is also troubled by the drift towards drone warfare ‘from the standpoint of democracy’. ‘I am keeping a completely open mind on the question until I have collected all the facts,’ he tells IBA Global Insight. "Between a Drone and Al-Qaeda" Hit and Run: Congress Must Not Let CIA Get Away with Murder. By Naureen Shah, Advocacy Advisor at Amnesty International USA A year ago almost to the day, on October 24, 2012, a U.S. drone strike killed a 68-year-old woman named Mamana Bibi.
She was gathering vegetables in her family’s large, mostly vacant fields in north Waziristan, Pakistan. We don’t know whom the U.S. intended to target, but it is hard to imagine that a policy that allows the killing of this grandmother, who was blown to pieces before the eyes of her young grandchildren, is anything but a catastrophic failure on the part of the U.S. government. The latest revelation from documents leaked by Edward Snowden, reported in the Washington Post, suggests the NSA cast a “surveillance blanket” over parts of northern Pakistan, feeding enormous amounts of data to the CIA’s secret lethal drone program.