Search: drones

...violations by the other. Instead, as Human Rights Watch has shown through detailed, on-the-ground investigations, Israeli forces fired white phosphorous munitions indiscriminately over civilian areas, shot and killed Palestinian civilians waving white flags, attacked children playing on rooftops with precision missiles fired from aerial drones and needlessly destroyed civilian property. Now let’s move on to various HRW reports. HRW, April 23, 2009:” Human Rights Watch’s investigation into the fighting in Gaza concluded that Israeli forces were responsible for serious violations of the laws of war, including the use of heavy...

...name of “necessity” in treating non-state actors, but the reciprocal obligations elaborated for soldiers turn out to mean nothing, as usual. In any case, it does not seem to me to travel outside this special circumstance. In the case of targeted killing using drones or special forces, in counterterrorism rather than part of a conventional overt conflict, or outside the overt parts of it, however, I think it is a useful and important discussion. Necessity and distinction take center stage, because the status is not self-defining through uniforms or such....

...because the US is not a party to the ICC. (Venezeula, of course, is). On the other hand, the writers glossed over the fact that “delivering” a high level US government official to the ICC’s front door does not equal a referral – the ICC has the power to determine whether its jurisdictional requirements are met under Arts. 12 & 13 of the Rome Statute. The other creative fiction of the show is that the ICC has an ongoing investigation into US activities (drones, torture, and rendition). In reality, the...

...governing their use in situations of armed conflict.” The clearest challenge to this principal today, according to the independent expert, comes from the program operated by the US Central Intelligence Agency in which targeted killings are carried out from unmanned aerial vehicles or drones. “It is clear that many hundreds of people have been killed, and that this number includes some innocent civilians. Because the program remains shrouded in official secrecy, the international community does not know when and where the CIA is authorized to kill, the criteria for individuals...

[Nancy Simons is a Belgian lawyer and serves on the International Bar Association’s Drones Task Force. Her professional background lies in international law generally. She has worked at a number of international non-governmental organisations and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.] It has been almost two weeks since the United States (US) initiated several missile strikes on a Syrian airfield. From the US perspective, the justification for this use of force was that it was in response to the use of chemical weapons allegedly by the Assad regime....

Earlier this week, Harold Koh gave a speech. And it wasn’t about conflicts, drones, or cyberwar, topics that have dominated the attention of international lawyers in recent years. Rather, Koh’s speech was a meditation on the processes of international law-making that confront the State Department on a daily basis. It was, simply put, a survey of the current international legal landscape from the U.S. perspective. Koh reviewed the formal U.S. treaty-making process, citing past victories like the New START Treaty and the Obama Administration’s continued push for Senate advice and...

...Thai Union Group Pcl, to free its supply chains of destructive fishing practices and alleged labor abuses. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the killing of a Japanese man in Bangladesh on Saturday, in a statement posted on their official Twitter account. Europe The British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced he will be doubling the number of drones the country’s armed forces use in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The European Union should loosen its deficit rules due to extra spending caused by...

...unmanned aircraft to monitor the volatile border with Rwanda and Uganda, the first time UN peacekeepers have deployed surveillance drones. France said it will start disarming fighters in the Central African Republic by force if necessary, as relative calm returned to the capital Bangui following three days of heavy fighting between Christians and Muslims. Europe The Vatican refused to provide the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child with information on the Church’s internal investigations into the sexual abuse of children by clergy, saying that its policy was to...

...he was accused of heinous crimes. When I have spoken on this topic, whether to my students or at conferences, I have made the politically incorrect statement that if we want Bashir so badly that we are willing to bend the rules of international law beyond recognition, then we should simply send one of those ubiquitous drones to “take him out”. But our desire “to get Bashir” is now out of way since he will be on KLM flight to The Hague pretty soon, and I think this offers the...

...case of unmanned combat systems, such as drones. If the operator of an attack drone witnesses a group of enemy combatants with weapons dropped and waving a white flag, should those soldiers be considered hors de combat and no longer subject to attack? The lack of ground forces to process as POWs those who surrender has made this question a matter of some debate due to the potential for misuse. The difference in the current situation is the greater potential degree of control exercised over those aboard a ship at...

The skies over Somalia have become so congested with drones that the UAVs pose a threat to air traffic and potentially to an arms-embargo. In a shift from the past, the Egyptian president, Mohamed Mursi, met with the leader of Hamas, Ismael Haniyeh. The Netherlands suspended $6.15 million in aid to Rwanda yesterday, following a similar move by the US a day earlier, over Rwanda’s support for rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urges nations to “bridge their differences” in coming to a...

...supported by attack helicopters and drones, and has had skirmishes with armed groups, make the intensification of hostilities a distinct possibility. Where there are sustained, direct clashes between MINUSMA and armed groups it would be difficult for the UN to contest the applicability of IHL. Whether a peace operation is a party to the conflict under IHL is also relevant where the UN is providing support to the host state military. Peace operations do not typically fight a war against an enemy but, for instance, MINUSMA is mandated to conduct...