Search: drones
25 Apr The Legality Surrounding the US Strikes in Syria
[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....22 Nov Cyber POWS and the Second Geneva Convention
...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...12 Jan Autonomous Legal Reasoning: Legal and Ethical Issues in the Technologies of Conflict
One of the highlights of my Fall semester was the opportunity to host a one-day workshop at Temple Law on how autonomous technology may impact the future of international humanitarian law (IHL) and the lawyers who practice it. With co-sponsorship from the International Committee of the Red Cross (specifically, Rob Ramey and Tracey Begley) as well as Gary Brown of Marine Corps University, we wanted to have an inter-disciplinary conversation on the way autonomy may implicate the practice of law across a range of new technologies, including cyberwar, drones, and...
09 Oct Trump vs. International Law: Koh’s Blueprint for Ending America’s Wars and Avoiding Perpetual War
...footing, Koh’s concerns are focused on the dangers of wars that are unbounded in their substantive and temporal scope—who we are fighting and for how long. When it comes to geographic boundaries for wartime targeting, however, he offers only the unwilling and unable test and the Presidential Policy Guidance put into place by President Obama as constraints. Koh is of course right to argue that the use of armed drones in wartime can be lawful. But if peace is to be the norm and war the exception, as Koh argues...27 Jul Weekday News Wrap: Friday, July 27, 2012
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...06 Apr Events and announcements: April 6, 2014
...October 2014. Proposals for papers should be submitted to the editors by July 31, 2014. Contact details are available on the TDM website. Announcements The ICRC has launched its first Research & Debate Cycle on New Technologies and the Modern Battlespace. In recent years, a wide array of new technologies has entered the modern battlefield, giving rise to new methods and means of warfare, such as cyber attacks, armed drones and robots. While there can be no doubt that IHL applies to them, applying pre-existing legal rules to new technologies...
12 Feb Sudan Agrees to Send Al Bashir to the ICC: What Now for the Law?
...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...06 Apr Weekday News Wrap: Friday, April 6, 2012
...after NATO troops leave the country in 2014, Afghanistan will not be used as a launch pad for US drones. Two Tunisians have been jailed for seven years after posting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed on Facebook, fueling allegations that new leaders are placing a chokehold on free speech. Invisible Children has released its follow-up video to the viral Kony 2012 sensation: Kony 2012 Part II: Beyond Famous. Ahead of the Easter weekend, the Pope issued a statement reaffirming the ban on female priests in the Catholic Church and underscoring...25 Feb Weekday News Wrap: Monday, February 25, 2013
...the Congo. The Syrian opposition has decided to boycott international talks, saying that the world has turned its back on the war-torn nation and calling the lack of international action “shameful.” The US has sent 100 troops to Niger to construct a drone base from which Predator drones will operate. In other drone news, a recent study found that drone pilots are susceptible to the same bouts of depression, post-traumatic stress and anxiety as pilots of manned aircraft deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. Dozens of people have been killed in...