US Drone Policy Condemned in UN Report

LovePeace| The United Nations has issued a 29-page report highly-critical of the growing use of armed drones by the United States to kill alleged terrorism suspects, arguing that it undermines global constraints on the use of military force and potentially leads to a chaotic new world of computer-games-driven (our word) weaponry. (Note: Subsequently we read that the BBC uses the word Play Station). 

The report, considered the most extensive effort by the United Nations to grapple with the legal implications of armed drones, proposes a summit of “key military powers” to clarify legal limits on such killings. via NYTimes

A fundamental challenge of the drone attacks is that they’re operated — not by the American military — but by intelligence forces, which are notably covert and unaccountable in their actions. 

Applying the US Sept. 11-terrorist defense logic for drone attacks to other countries, the report — which will be presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday — envisions a situation in which dozens of countries are carrying out “competing drone attacks” outside their borders against people “labeled as terrorists by one group or another.”

“I’m particularly concerned that the United States seems oblivious to this fact when it asserts an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe,” Mr. Alston said in an accompanying statement. “But this strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability is not an entitlement which the United States or other states can have without doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions.” via NYTimes

40 other countries in the world have drone technology.