UN to Establish Ongoing Investigations into Obama’s Drone War
Citing reports of follow-up strikes and targeting of funerals, the UN investigator said war crimes may have been committed
by John Glaser, October 25, 2012
The United Nations has decided to set up an investigations unit dedicated to examining the legality of drone attacks and uncovering cases in which civilians are killed in the Obama administration’s drone war.
The announcement was made by Ben Emmerson, a UN special rapporteur, in a recent speech to Harvard law school in which he condemned secret rendition and waterboarding as crimes under international law.
Emmerson, along with several other colleagues at the UN, called for effective investigations into drone attacks this past summer, warning that some US drone strikes in Pakistan may amount to war crimes.
In his Harvard speech, he said: “If the relevant states are not willing to establish effective independent monitoring mechanisms…then it may in the last resort be necessary for the UN to act.
“Together with my colleague Christof Heyns, [the UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings], I will be launching an investigation unit within the special procedures of the [UN] Human Rights Council to inquire into individual drone attacks.”
Emmerson argued that the Washington’s claim that it can target for assassination with drones anybody, anywhere in the world because it is an international conflict was indefensible.
“The global war paradigm has done immense damage to a previously shared international consensus on the legal framework underlying both international human rights law and international humanitarian law,” he said. “It has also given a spurious justification to a range of serious human rights and humanitarian law violations.
“The [global] war paradigm was always based on the flimsiest of reasoning, and was not supported even by close allies of the US. The first-term Obama administration initially retreated from this approach, but over the past 18 months it has begun to rear its head once again, in briefings by administration officials seeking to provide a legal justification for the drone program of targeted killing in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia …
“[It is] alleged that since President Obama took office at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims and more than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. Christof Heyns…has described such attacks, if they prove to have happened, as war crimes. I would endorse that view.”
We are in the Dangerous new world of Drones .
The announcement was made by Ben Emmerson, a UN special rapporteur, in a recent speech to Harvard law school in which he condemned secret rendition and waterboarding as crimes under international law.Emmerson, along with several other colleagues at the UN, called for effective investigations into drone attacks this past summer, warning that some US drone strikes in Pakistan may amount to war crimes.
In his Harvard speech, he said: “If the relevant states are not willing to establish effective independent monitoring mechanisms…then it may in the last resort be necessary for the UN to act.
“Together with my colleague Christof Heyns, [the UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings], I will be launching an investigation unit within the special procedures of the [UN] Human Rights Council to inquire into individual drone attacks.”
Emmerson argued that the Washington’s claim that it can target for assassination with drones anybody, anywhere in the world because it is an international conflict was indefensible.
“The global war paradigm has done immense damage to a previously shared international consensus on the legal framework underlying both international human rights law and international humanitarian law,” he said. “It has also given a spurious justification to a range of serious human rights and humanitarian law violations.
“The [global] war paradigm was always based on the flimsiest of reasoning, and was not supported even by close allies of the US. The first-term Obama administration initially retreated from this approach, but over the past 18 months it has begun to rear its head once again, in briefings by administration officials seeking to provide a legal justification for the drone program of targeted killing in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia …
“[It is] alleged that since President Obama took office at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims and more than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. Christof Heyns…has described such attacks, if they prove to have happened, as war crimes. I would endorse that view.” We are in the Dangerous new world of Drones .
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