In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Search: drones

10 Oct

John C. Dehn I am not on the inside of this debate, but I don't buy the constant meme from former Bush administration officials that debating the proper legal boundaries of our actions overseas is necessarily against our long (rather than short) term interests. We must remember that whatever rules we adopt will be used against us. We then must ask ourselves what those rules should be. What is a bit puzzling to me is that a country using drones to eliminate threats in un- or weakly governed foreign lands...
10.10.11 | |

10 Nov

...complex issues. But the only answer that is most certainly not correct is the one which you offer, that is that all of these incidents are part of one big, single IAC. At any rate you also conflate the legality of the US actions under the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello. To take the strikes in Pakistan as an example, my understanding of the facts (which might be completely wrong) is that Pakistan gave persmission to the US to operate its drones there. If so, a jus...
10.11.08 | |

04 Nov

...border, but throughout Pakistan and plausibly anywhere else where enemy combatants may be found. It may also be that if the CIA is constrained by the Geneva Conventions in the treatment of detainees then it is also authorized to remotely pilot the drones against enemy combatants not captured. Kevin Jon Heller Howard, You are absolutely right. I was not thinking specifically about KSM when I claimed that Bush authorized the commission of war crimes; I was thinking about all of the detainees captured in Afghanistan, which clearly satisfy the nexus....
04.11.10 | |

24 Sep

...because he defended the wall built in Palestine, the massacre of Jenin, the acts of the government against its people in Bahrein. On the other hand, the other lawyer you admire, H. Koh, justified the invasion of Grenada and he is not liked in NY for his defense of drones. I called them club of invaders since the countries they represent have ivaded other countries, like Chile who invaded Bolivia in 1879, if you didn't know. So, there's lot of water under the bridge in the problem between Bolivia and...
24.09.15 | |

21 Oct

...lie is fairly standard for that neck of the woods - consider, e.g., Pakistan's continuing denial of consent for US drone attacks while publicly available satellite imagery shows US drones previously operating from Pakistani airfields. Kerry tried to do just that, but has obviously now been called out. Perhaps the Washington Post and Opinio Juris are not widely read in Afghanistan and this façade can continue. Or perhaps it is ultimately for the better as a more rapid US withdrawal and Taliban takeover, although a short term bloodbath and death...
21.10.13 | |

28 Sep

...and a more nuanced response from the Dutch MFA (also for those who cannot read Dutch) in a recent paper Christophe Paulussen and I wrote surveying EU Member States on such questions (see page 32 et seq. here: http://icct.nl/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ICCT-Dorsey-Paulussen-Towards-A-European-Position-On-Armed-Drones-And-Targeted-Killing-Surveying-EU-Counterterrorism-Perspectives.pdf): "The Netherlands holds that self-defence under article 51 UN Charter can provide a legal basis to use force in case of an (imminent) armed attack.The Caroline-criteria provide a useful instrument in order to assess whether an attack is imminent. From this it follows that general, non-specific, threats by terrorist organisations cannot...
28.09.15 | |

27 Feb

...accuses me of letting policy preferences trump law in response to a post that made no policy claims whatsoever -- and it's my burden to rebut him? But fine. Here are three examples, all of which I have discussed extensively on the blog: (1) I do not believe that Israel is legally occupying Gaza, though I dislike that legal conclusion immensely; (2) I believe that a wide variety of drone strikes are legal, even though I am completely opposed to the the use of drones on policy grounds; (3) I...
27.02.13 | |

11 Apr

...then, with what protections? With respect to "who," outside the territory of the U.S., for example, those who are in the actual "power or effective control" of the U.S. (not those being targeted by high flying drones). Perhaps for this reason, there was inadequate attention to human rights law, but the point could have been made. With respect to h.r. protections, the ICCPR prohibits "arbitrary" death. Lawful targetings during war or self-defense under UN art. 51 would not be "arbitrary." This point should also have been made. Raha Wala Good...
11.04.12 | |

29 May

...our current involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is this what it takes to win? And, if so, isn't this a price worth paying to get rid of one of the worlds first serious terrorist organisations? The Sri Lankan government shelled the last remaining Tamil positions, we send unmanned drones into Pakistan, and Israel send rockets through people's bedroom windows. The ius in bello does not necessarily forbid "indiscriminate shelling", if that is indeed what they did. It forbids deliberately targeting civilians, and beyond that disproportionate attacks, but even if there...
29.05.09 | |

06 May

...the international system will see it corrected. I would suggest, however, that we are watching the opposite occur. The US military operational strategy, in using drones and special operations forces to make targeted killings of individuals associated with specific terrorist organizations in a number of disparate geographical locations seems to me to be founded on the proposition that the US is currently engaged in a noninternational armed conflict with these specific terrorist orgaizations. As clumsily done as it has been, the message from the US national security establishment is unambiguously...
06.05.11 | |

03 Nov

Steve Groves LOL on #5, Julian. I agree with you, though it would help even more if the Alaska Senate seat goes to Miller. And don't count on a "President Palin" to push for LOST, even though she's from Alaska ... Jordan Response... Re: targeted killing, likely to expand to include more targets in Yemen? and some in Mexico (drones fly along parts of the border now and Secretary Clinton remarked that the narco-terrorist-organized criminals are acting "like" insurgents)? On propriety of targeting, even a U.S. national in Yemen outside...
03.11.10 | |

09 Jul

...justification. From the beginning, however, this enemy has been treated as "the worst of the worst" criminals and terrorists, to be treated as harshly as sentenced felons. Trying to have it both ways, logical contradictions are inevitable. Since Hamdi, the detention of enemy combatants has been authorized under the laws of war. The AUMF may be a trigger, but it is not the source of the authority. The AUMF does not contain any language about dropping bombs or using Predator drones against targets in Pakistan. Once you start an armed...
09.07.09 | |