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Search: drones

10 Oct

...history of major contradictions, paradoxes, potentials, and limits, is far less teleological, or unitary, than what many have said so far. Sometimes they, the work of the laws of war and that of peacemaking, overlap and work cooperatively, whereas at other times they operate completely independently, or even work in ways going directly against each other, with occasionally potentially dangerous implications in light of relatively new technological (e.g. drones, autonomous weapons), legal (such as the 9/11 AUMF, the responsibility to protect), and certain ideological developments (the rise of emergency doctrines)....
10.10.16 | |

28 May

...strikes against people suspected of belonging to Al Qaeda, complicating the Obama administration’s growing reliance on that tactic in Pakistan. Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said Thursday that he would deliver a report on June 3 to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva declaring that the “life and death power” of drones should be entrusted to regular armed forces, not intelligence agencies. He contrasted how the military and the C.I.A. responded to allegations that strikes had killed civilians by mistake....
28.05.10 | |

22 May

[Gabor Rona is the International Legal Director of Human Rights First.] What is the source of the power to detain in an armed conflict that is not between states (non-international armed conflict, or NIAC)? Where is the relevant law on grounds and procedures for such detention found? Torture and drones aside, this is probably the most vexing, most controversial, and most significant of debates to come out of the “war on terror.” And it has been fired up anew in Serdar Mohammed v. Ministry of Defence [2014] EWHC 1369 (QB),...
22.05.14 | |

18 Apr

...drones. Other countries are moving to restrict access to claims by judges of universal jurisdiction, including in Spain, true. But my read of those is that rather than plainly stripping out the category, instead the move – as in Spain – is to require highly discretionary political assent from someone, whether the Ministry of Justice or Attorney General or someone similar with political accountability. (Bear in mind that the magistrate position that Garzon occupies is something between a judge and an investigating district attorney in the American system – it...
18.04.10 | |

04 May

...Spiegel reports that the US Air Force base in Ramstein, Germany, is a central and indispensible element in Barack Obama’s controversial use of drones in the war against terror. Americas Costa Rica has issued an emergency alert after a ship carrying 180 tons of ammonium nitrate sunk off the country’s Pacific coast, releasing the massive amount of toxic cargo into the ocean. The death toll from an air strike by U.S.-led forces on the northern Syrian province of Aleppo has risen to 52 including seven children, a group monitoring the...
04.05.15 | |

09 Jan

...his pre-trial detention. The UN is seeking to deploy surveillance drones over Congo, but neighboring Rwanda is not happy with this proposal. In other news about the DRC, the M23 rebels have declared a unilateral ceasefire ahead of a second round of peace talks with the government. Over at Justice in Conflict, Mark Kersten writes more about the US’s Rewards for Justice program and implications with America’s relationship with the ICC. A senior White House official has said the US would consider leaving no American troops in Afghanistan after the...
09.01.13 | |

01 Apr

...to the U.S. military’s use of armed drones. These criticisms are grounded in larger ethical and morality debates, but increasingly rely on AI as the focal point of contention.   We should neither dismiss outright the potential future dangers of AI use in the military, however unrealistic those risks are often portrayed, nor assume that more immediate, pressing concerns about AI-enabled military systems will be resolved without proactive intervention. To balance the assessment of both speculative and immediate risks, I suggest a five-tier risk hierarchy for developing and employing AI in...
01.04.24 | |

09 Jun

...to the implementation of the treaty and its international humanitarian law aspects. More information is here. ALMA and the Radzyner School of Law of the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya would like to invite you to the next session of the Joint International Humanitarian Law Forum, on June 19, 2013. This month they host Prof. Eugene Kontorovich to discuss his new article “Jurisdiction over Israeli Settlement Activity in the International Criminal Court” and Dr. Ben Clarke to present his new article “Arming drones for law enforcement: challenges and opportunities for the...
09.06.13 | |

01 May

...He made the best case anyone could, but it left a lot to be desired. Throughout his tenure at State, we called on the administration to ensure that its targeted killing program was consistent with the laws of war. We’re still not satisfied that it is. But on a range of issues — military commissions, treaties, Guantanamo Bay, detention, and transparency on drones — Koh forged progress behind the scenes. This wasn’t the kind of work that made headlines, but it strengthened respect for human rights and reduced suffering. If...
01.05.15 | |

21 Jun

...Al Qaeda at the time of the Cole bombing — before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the authorization by Congress to use military force against their perpetrators. The United States initially handled the Cole attack as a peacetime terrorism crime, but the government now contends that a state of armed conflict had legally existed since 1996, when Osama bin Laden declared war against the United States. According to the Obama administration, therefore, “firing missiles from drones that kill people over an extended period of time pursuant to a U.N.-authorized...
21.06.11 | |

25 Apr

...industrial zone. Lawfare highlights a snippet of testimony given at yesterday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on drones that alleges that the Obama Administration is targeting and killing low-level insurgents, the detainment of whom caused much criticism during the Bush Administration years. In addition to British, French and Israeli allegations, Qatar is now saying that Syria has been using chemical weapons against its own people. Under pressure from the political far-right, Switzerland has now restricted immigration from all EU countries, placing an annual restriction on the number of resident permits it...
25.04.13 | |

20 Mar

...they do not, what kinds of compensation may ever be made available to those who wrongfully suffer a misdirected attack – who knows? By a number of accounts – Richard Clarke’s and others – CIA came to be in the drone business substantially because the military, and especially the Air Force, didn’t want the mission in the 1990’s when the idea of putting a missile on surveillance drones in the interest of counterterrorism first came into vogue. Times have since changed. CIA is no longer the only option. There is...
20.03.13 | |