In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Search: battlefield robots

12 Jul

...artificial distinction that simply does not exist on the battlefield. Analytically, on the one hand, far from a civil war between a government and nonstate actors within the territory of a state, the Afghanistan war is the invasion of the territory of a state by another state – the cuts against calling it an armed conflict “not of an international character.” On the other hand, if you conceive of the war against Al Qaeda as a conflict separate from the conflict against Afghanistan, then because Al Qaeda is a nonstate...
12.07.06 | |

15 Oct

...soldiers in the field here, as they operate far away from civilians and under time pressure. But note the contrast with modifying several thousand pagers into explosive devices: instead of being prepared ad hoc, on the battlefield and under time pressure, the pager operation was geographically and temporally far removed from the actual fighting, with ample time to consider what objects to use, how they would be spread and the potential impact on civilians. It thus much more closely resembles mass production akin to what the Soviets supposedly did in...
15.10.24 | |

08 Jul

...application on the battlefield than is generally understood. First, self-defence does not apply when a person is responding to a lawful act (eg, I cannot claim self-defence as a legal basis of for my use of force against a police officer who is exercising a lawful arrest). Second, and as a corollary to the first point, self-defence does not arise when military members are otherwise authorised by law to use force against another person. Where a State is engaged in an international armed conflict, a combatant is entitled to the...
08.07.14 | |

08 Jul

...him for murder committed on the battlefield. All of this suggests that the modern classification scheme has lost the richness of these older conceptual categories. And we might have been too hasty in concluding that rebels can never enjoy the privilege of combatancy. In some situations it may be logically coherent to extend the privilege of combatancy to them during some non-international armed conflicts – and at the same time prosecute them for treason and other loyalty-based offenses if they have violated a pertinent duty or oath to their sovereign....
08.07.14 | |

13 Feb

...could use to advance pacification and Vietnamization. Partially offsetting these gains were the allies’ own need to extend their forces over a new battlefield and the political damage the Nixon administration had suffered in the United States. Nevertheless, the advantages appeared to American officials in Saigon and Washington to outweigh the disadvantages. As 1970 ended, they were making plans for additional, even more ambitious, cross-border offensives. And now the Australian narrative, produced by the Australian War Memorial: At the end of April 1970 US and South Vietnamese troops were ordered...
13.02.19 | |

27 Apr

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools are already in use to help identify targets on the battlefield and they might soon power new types of cyber and autonomous weapons. These technologies could have profound implications for the role of humans in armed conflict and there will be important choices ahead. Among the most pressing – for compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL) and to retain a measure of humanity in warfare – will be to ensure human control and judgement in AI-enabled tasks and decisions that pose risks to...
27.04.20 | |

14 Feb

...this regard, it serves as a timely reminder that the Assad regime cannot be readmitted into the international community simply because it prevailed on the battlefield with the help of its allies, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. On the contrary, it should be held accountable for the atrocities that enabled its military triumph. This symbolism is important in light of recent moves by Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Egypt to reintegrate the Assad regime into the Arab world (see here, here and here). Even the US recently...
14.02.22 | |

15 Nov

...time, the Georgians have inflicted a wound on their own credibility if they indiscriminately shelled. In particular, this can be used as evidence (rightly or wrongly) that South Ossetians are likely to suffer human rights abuses at Russian hands and that a peaceful reunification is not politically possible. The current phase of the conflict over South Ossetia is not on the battlefield but in the arena of public opinion, in trying to shape perceptions that will in turn frame what will be viewed as a reasonable or unreasonable final settlement....
15.11.08 | |

28 Apr

...demonisation of defence attorneys in the US who had the temerity to represent individuals accused of terrorism. Marc Thiessen, for example, (in)famously claimed that “[t]he habeas lawyers were not doing their constitutional duty to defend unpopular criminal defendants. They were using the federal courts as a tool to undermine our military’s ability to keep dangerous enemy combatants off the battlefield in a time of war.” Such despicable claims led to significant pushback from both progressives and (to their credit) many conservatives — and rightfully so. Yet now we witness the...
28.04.14 | |

23 Feb

...to a $1.7 billion savings. So domestic detention is not only safe, it’s cheaper too. Obama also announced that although military commissions would remain an option for detainees who are captured on the battlefield in active theaters, for all others, Article III courts are the preferred option for terrorism prosecutions. There was little discussion of how to clear the political log jam that remains over the fate of Guantanamo, though the President said that he was “clear-eyed” about the challenges of achieving the result he wanted: “The politics of this...
23.02.16 | |

30 Sep

...predicted by critics of the ICRC’s issuing of the “interpretive guidance”) of believing that if you repeat it often enough, you make it so, again that is not the US government’s view. State practice still matters.) Where? Does it matter that he was in Yemen, and not an “active battlefield” in a conventional hostilities sense?The US government does not accept the idea that the armed conflict with Al Qaeda — or armed conflict generally — is confined as a legal matter to some notion of “theatres of conflict” or “active...
30.09.11 | |

02 Jan

...infamous meetings with Saddam took place here.) During the Iran-Iraq war, the U.S. provided Iraq with billions of dollars of credit, helped it arrange to purchase the arms it needed for the war, and gave the Iraqi armed forces critical battlefield intelligence. The U.S. worked to prevent the U.N. from censoring Iraq for its use of chemical weapons against Iran. During the Iran-Iraq war, U.S. officials encouraged its allies — including Israel, which was willing — to provide Iraq with arms. After the Gulf War, the U.S. allowed Saddam to...
02.01.07 | |