Drones and human rights
U.N. Panel to Investigate Rise in Drone Strikes
By JOHN F. BURNS, NYT
LONDON — A prominent British human rights lawyer said on Thursday that a United Nations panel he leads would investigate what he called the “exponential rise” in drone strikes used in counterterrorist operations, “with a view to determining whether there is a plausible allegation of unlawful killing.”
The lawyer, Ben Emmerson, special investigator for the United Nations Human Rights Council, said at a news conference that the nine-month study would look at “drone strikes and other forms of remotely targeted killing,” including a wide array of so-called standoff weapons used in modern warfare, like ground-launched missiles and similar weapons fired from manned aircraft.
The immediate focus, Mr. Emmerson said in an interview, would be on 25 selected drone strikes that had been conducted in recent years in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and the Palestinian territories. That put the panel’s spotlight on the United States, Britain and Israel, the nations that have conducted drone attacks in those areas, but Mr. Emmerson said the inquiry would not be singling out the United States or any other countries.
“Absolutely not,” he said in the interview. “The United States may be the market leader in the use of drone technology, but there are more than 50 states with the technology that can be easily converted into an active drone arsenal.”
(More here.)
LONDON — A prominent British human rights lawyer said on Thursday that a United Nations panel he leads would investigate what he called the “exponential rise” in drone strikes used in counterterrorist operations, “with a view to determining whether there is a plausible allegation of unlawful killing.”
The lawyer, Ben Emmerson, special investigator for the United Nations Human Rights Council, said at a news conference that the nine-month study would look at “drone strikes and other forms of remotely targeted killing,” including a wide array of so-called standoff weapons used in modern warfare, like ground-launched missiles and similar weapons fired from manned aircraft.
The immediate focus, Mr. Emmerson said in an interview, would be on 25 selected drone strikes that had been conducted in recent years in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and the Palestinian territories. That put the panel’s spotlight on the United States, Britain and Israel, the nations that have conducted drone attacks in those areas, but Mr. Emmerson said the inquiry would not be singling out the United States or any other countries.
“Absolutely not,” he said in the interview. “The United States may be the market leader in the use of drone technology, but there are more than 50 states with the technology that can be easily converted into an active drone arsenal.”
(More here.)
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