Next week’s UN debate on the use of drones is going to focus heavily on their use for extrajudicial executions, and the United States in particular, which is using drones to an extent no other nation is.
UN officials concede that there may be some valid uses for drones that would comply with international humanitarian law, but also say that the US is almost certainly not doing so.
The legality of what the US is doing is somewhat further muddied by the Obama Administration’s intense secrecy about what exactly they are doing, and the UN is urging them to declassify as much of the details of the program as possible, including information on civilian deaths.
The US has sought to dismiss claims of civilian deaths but also, at least to the extent they discuss the matter at all publicly, seem not to be keeping track of who is getting killed at all, beyond those rare cases when the death comes with an actual name attached.
Many hundreds of civilians have been killed in the US attacks in Pakistan, and scores of others in Yemen, a fact the Obama Administration is loathe to discuss.
In regard to USG and EU militarism policies toward other nations, if it was based on rule of laws either regimes and questionable democracy wouldn't have wars (as their daily agendas) against any nations to began with, they wouldn't use Saudis or UAE barbarians in Syria, helping regimes as such or protecting them. So drone killings is a technical way to save the USA or English or German or French solders on the ground, the wars created and orchestrated by either regimes, but disrespecting the international law is although saving a life but killing hundreds of other nationalities, that's Anglo Saxon-ism.
The US Supreme Court ruled in Hamdin that ALL persons on a battlefield have at least Civilian status under Geneva, hence UNLESS the persons are IN UNIFORM and actively carrying weapons in plain sight they are in fact AT LAW Civilians!
It is a serious War Crime to actively attack civilians in a War Zone let alone a place that War has NOT BEEN LAWFULLY DECLARED ON!
"LIKELY"? The UN is just an entity and the world should demand that an exorcism be performed to get rid of it for good.
The reality of the illegality of using drones as they are being used by the USG has never been in question. You may attempt to argue the case regarding the labeling of civilian deaths, combatants called by the USG, but you can't deny that the use of drones across sovereign borders is a clear violation of the UN Charter and numerous International laws. But despite years of clear violations by the USG, the UN issues a phenomenally weak statement. And people wonder why the UN is considered an ineffective organization…
Until the right of the US to hide behind the VETO of the UN security council is removed it will do as it likes, the majority of all the Problems attributed to the lack of the UN doing anything is because of the VETO in one way or another!
Don't you love how clearly the USG employs its propaganda? When a civilian death count serves their imperial purposes, they are extremely exact and at the highest possible end of the estimate chain, even without proof! I'm referring of course to Syria, where the US continually cited the exact number 1,429, which turned out to be the second highest estimate of any group in the world, the highest being the "rebels" themselves!
But when it comes to death counts that are an OBSTACLE to US imperial purposes, you get the entire spectrum of evasions, vagaries, equivocations, straight lies, and, if you're lucky, the LOWEST POLITICALLY POSSIBLE admittance of "collateral damages".
Or, as it was put by the US about the Iraq war, in the ultimate display of how the US only uses body counts for propaganda purposes, "We don't do body counts."
Well, that's not exactly true, guys! You do them when you want to use the count as a pretext to kill many more people and try to install a US compliant regime! We're onto ya 😉
Terrorism should be called blowback vengeance, as our wars of plunder are the brutal imperialism that caused the 9-11 disaster. For Saudi Arabia just ordered $10 billion of war materials made in USA, which when exploded will generate $10 billion worth of blowback vengeance, which is why our killer drones are the weapon of choice in this game called terrorism.
It is my understanding that "international law" is exactly what the US says it is at any given time and place. If you don't like it, shut up or prepare for sanctions and bombing. The good news is that out of a combination of greed and fear, no nation on earth except those being bombed will ever contradict the US and its interpretation of what is lawful and what is not.