Source:Al Jazeera
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has launched
an investigation into drone strikes and will review resultant civilian
casualties to determine whether the attacks constitute a war crime.
Ben Emmerson, a UN special rapporteur on human rights and
counter-terrorism, formally launched the inquiry on Thursday, in
response to requests from Russia, China and Pakistan.
A statement released by the UN Office of the High Commissioner of
Human Rights states that the inquiry will provide a "critical
examination of the factual evidence concerning civilian casualties".
It also states that the inquiry ultimately intends to make
recommendations to the UN General Assembly to prompt countries to
"investigate into the lawfulness and proportionality of such attacks".
"This is not an investigation into the conduct of any particular
state. It's an investigation into the consequence into this form of
technology," Emmerson told Al Jazeera.
"The reality is that the increasing availability of this technology
[...] makes it very likely that more states will be using this
technology in the coming months and years and includes raising the
spectre that non state organisations - organisations labelled as
terrorist groups - could use the technology in retaliation," he added.
He said that it was a "very serious and escalating situation" which must be addressed by the international community "urgently".
At a press conference on Thursday in London, Emmerson said that the British government had already agreed to co-operate with the investigation and that he was "optimistic" that the US would do the same.
He also requested the US to release "before and after" videos of the
drone strikes and internal reports of those killed, including civilians.
Emmerson's team will conduct the inquiry in consultation with military experts and journalists from the UK, Yemen and Pakistan.
Drone deaths
Chris Woods, a senior journalist at London-based The Bureau of
Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) said "more than 400 US covert drone
strikes have so far taken place in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia which
have killed at least 3,000 people".
In a twitter post from
Emmerson's press conference, Woods said that the "inquiry will study 25
drone strikes, where civilians [were] reported killed across Yemen,
FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan], Somalia,
Afghanistan and Gaza".
"We believe more than 500 were likely to have been civilians [in
those attacks]. The UN inquiry is important because it will focus on the
key questions of the legality of such strikes, and the reported deaths
of civilians," he told Al Jazeera.
He added that TBIJ believes that there is not enough evidence to
support the claims of some US officials who say that Pakistan secretly
approves drone strikes.
Robert Densmore, editor of Defence Report magazine told Al Jazeera that the inquiry "is something that [needed] to happen to drive forward some more regulation".
He said the inquiry could lay a framework to a potential UN
convention to govern the use of drones - something similar to
conventions in place for undetectable landmines and cluster ammunition.
"I think there could be enough multilateral pressure to convince the US that this would be something to pursue" he said.
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