Analysis of International Legal Standards Concerning Drone Use

 

 

 

 

 

Sam Fishman will graduate from the University of Southern California in 2016 with a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Law and a minor in Cinematic Arts. After graduating, he plans to attend law school. When he’s not writing, you can find him on a film set or on the tennis courts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

In modern day warfare, the United States and many other countries have increasingly begun using unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, for the purpose of assassinating those suspected of terrorist activities. This essay shall analyze international legal standards concerning the use of combat drones—drones with attacking capabilities—using the United States’ deployment of drones in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen in the War on Terror as its focal point. Ultimately, this essay will conclude that the dominant narrative in the United States of armed drones enabling precise targeted killing of terrorists is a false one, and that these combat drones should be condemned as internationally illegal under International Humanitarian Law. But because of the international trend toward greater use of these targeted killings, necessary measures must be put in place for greater multilateral oversight of their usage so as to regulate covert UAV programs (like the United States currently has in place) and limit civilian casualties.

Journalist Jane Mayer explicates the United States’ drone campaigns:

The U.S. government runs two drone programs. The military’s version, which is publicly acknowledged, operates in the recognized war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and targets enemies of U.S. troops stationed there…The C.I.A.’s program is aimed at terror suspects around the world, including in countries where U.S. troops are not based.^v

The George W. Bush Administration commenced this covert CIA drone operation as a counterterrorism effort in response to the September 11^th attacks to target suspected al Qaeda members in Afghanistan and Yemen. These targeted killings mainly focused on “personality” strikes—“strikes targeting named, allegedly high-value leaders of armed, non-state groups like Salim Sinan al Harethi and Nek Mohammad.”^vi Since then, the Obama Administration has dramatically expanded the United States’ drone program: “more drone strikes were carried out in President Barack Obama’s first year in office than in the previous eight years combined under George W. Bush.”^vii Much of this expansion has been due to a huge increase in the use of “signature” strikes. As opposed to personality strikes, signature strikes target people drone operators deem to be acting like members of al Qaeda. These strikes are “based on a pattern of life analysis” and “target groups of men who bear certain signatures, or defining characteristics associated with terrorist activity, but whose identities aren’t known.”^viii The drone program run by the CIA has increasingly taken the reigns under the Obama Administration, so it has not been made public just what these “defining characteristics” are. This makes such signature strikes seem quite dubious and suspect in nature. And because these clandestine drone operations exist, it makes their regulation extremely difficult.

In order to assess drone strikes under international legal standards, we must first determine what international legal doctrines come into force. There are two lenses through which the international legal community can assess the legality of unmanned combat air vehicles—either International Human Rights Law or International Humanitarian Law. International Human Rights Law governs the protection of basic human rights: “International human rights law seeks to protect those rights that are inherent, universal, and inalienable in all human beings by simple virtue of their humanity.”^ix International Humanitarian Law, on the other hand, is the law of war (jus in bello). This body of international law governs permissible wartime conduct and is active in situations of war or armed conflict: “IHL [International Humanitarian Law] is a compilation of treaties, case law, and customary international law that seeks to prevent unjustified death, destruction, and suffering in war.”^x In the example of the War on Terror—this essay’s case study—it is apparent that International Humanitarian Law is the appropriate lens. International Human Rights Law is inapplicable to these drone strikes because it is a war, not a criminal enterprise.^xi As NYU Law Professor Margaret Satterthwaite affirms, “international humanitarian law is the applicable lex specialis, i.e.that it provides the relevant specialized, substantive rules regarding the treatment of individuals in the war on terror.”^xii

Delving further into affirming IHL to be the most apt lens and determining the applicable legal principles, we must characterize the conflict. International Humanitarian Law recognizes three types of conflicts: international armed conflict, internationalized armed conflict, and non-international armed conflict. Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 defines non-international armed conflict as, “armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties.”^xiii This signifies that one of the parties in the conflict is non-governmental. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia’s Tádic decision stipulated specific barometers so as to distinguish such non-international armed conflicts from mere violent disturbances like riots:

The threshold for determining that a non-international armed conflict (‘NIAC’) is at hand breaks down into two elements: (a) the intensity of the violence and (b) the organization of the parties. Both must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis by weighing up a host of indicative data.^xiv

The War on Terror is a paradigmatic case of a non-international armed conflict as the United States has engaged in a global conflict with al Qaeda—a non-state actor. The Bush and Obama Administrations have concurred with this characterization of the conflict as non-international, taking this position based on the Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which found that “the conflict with the Taliban and al Qaeda is non-international in character.”^xv The drone strikes executed in Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan in the War on Terror align with the aforementioned threshold provisions of a non-international armed conflict. With the expressed consent of the Yemeni government, United States military teams have conducted more than two dozen raids and airstrikes in Yemen since 2010 and have been launching signature drone strikes against al Qaeda leaders in Yemen since 2011.^xvi Since 2010 there has been a strain in U.S.-Pakistani relations and Pakistan has revoked consent for drone strikes,^xvii but prior to this the Pakistani government assisted the CIA in signature strikes targeting al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan that killed 2,562-3,325 people.^xviii And with the consent of the Afghan government, drone strikes targeting al Qaeda operatives have been carried out in Afghanistan for more than a decade and are increasing in rate: “In 2012, thirty-three drone strikes per month were being carried out in Afghanistan, compared to twenty-four and a half per month in 2011.”^xix Given these distinct explications of the conflict on its multiple fronts, a non-international armed conflict is unequivocally at hand. The frequency of and casualties resulting from these drone strikes in the War on Terror satisfy the intensity of violence stipulation from Common Article 3. And the existence of organized parties—the latter stipulation of Common Article 3—is clear as the United States, a governmental actor, is engaged in conflict with organized, insurgent groups taking refuge in Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. The expressed consent given by the Yemeni, Pakistani, and Afghan governments for the United States to execute drone strikes on these rebel, terrorist factions further renders the conflict as non-international. Thus, in the case of the War on Terror, the legal principles of International Humanitarian Law governing non-international armed conflicts come into force.

Given that the International Humanitarian Law paradigm applies to the conflict at hand, each party is bound by the principles and provisions dictated by the legal doctrine—“Common Article 3 and customary international law, including provisions from Additional Protocols I and II, expressly apply as sources of law for this conflict.”^xx Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions provides the fundamental provisions of restricted wartime acts in conflicts not of an international character. Additional Protocol I of 1977 to the Geneva Conventions fleshes out the provisions protecting victims of international armed conflicts, while Additional Protocol II of 1977 to the Geneva Conventions does the same for non-international armed conflicts. It would seem that Additional Protocol I would be irrelevant as it pertains to a different category of conflict, but many of its provisions have been “recognized as binding customary international law”^xxi for all wartime conflicts. Essentially embodying the provisions of these written treaties, such principles of Customary International Humanitarian Law also come into force. The fundamental customary law principles of jus in bello are composed of: military necessity, distinction, and proportionality.^xxii The principle of military necessity dictates that “armed attacks in wartime be ‘limited strictly to military objectives’ and offer ‘a definite military advantage.’”^xxiii The principle of distinction, deriving from Addition Protocol I, requires: “The Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives”^xxiv to ensure that “the civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations… and not be the object of attack.”^xxv And finally, the principle of proportionality, also deriving from Additional Protocol I, prohibits “an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”^xxvi Having established these specific guidelines dictating the legality of wartime conduct in non-international armed conflicts under the various relevant sources of International Humanitarian Law, the international legality of drone strikes can be effectively assessed by determining if they hold up to each of these provisions.

To begin, we will first look at drones within the context of the principle of military necessity. The United States maintains that no matter the collateral damage and civilian deaths, drone strikes are only executed with the intent of targeting “high level belligerent leaders,”^xxvii as put by Harold Koh, the United States State Department Legal Advisor. The United States further asserts that drone strikes do offer the necessary “definite military advantage” in “a war that is transnational in scope and with enemies intent on hiding among civilians and within failed or semi-failed states and territories.”^xxviii Government officials point to drones as the most effective method of reaching al Qaeda targets taking shelter in impenetrable places. In one such case, a drone strike allowed for the assassination of “a senior Taliban official in the impenetrable border region of Pakistan, while he was resting on the roof of a house… He was wanted for his involvement in a number of suicide bombings and the assassination of Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.”^xxix CIA Director Leon Panetta corroborates this military advantage, calling drones “the only game in town.”^xxx Thus, drone strikes do satisfy the legal requirements laid out by the principle of military necessity.

Next in line of the constraining principles of customary law is that of distinction. The provisions of this principle are namely laid out in great detail in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and the Civilian Population parts of Additional Protocols I and II. The United States is only party to the Geneva Conventions, not AdditionalProtocols I and II. But according to Cornelio Sommaruga, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (a humanitarian organization on which the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols confer a mandate to protect victims of armed conflicts): “At present, 148 States are party to Protocol I and 140 to Protocol II… their articles already form a set of rules of customary law valid for every State, whether or not it is party to the Protocols.”^xxxi Given this status, parties to all conflicts are bound by their guidelines. Returning to the issue at hand, the United States has a laundry list of civilian casualties at the behest of drone strikes. In order to dissect the enormous amount of information concerning these casualties in an organized fashion, we will first look at the raw numbers and then at specific reported cases, both in terms of the provisions of the distinction principle.

Because of the nature of drone strikes, gathering casualty data can be a difficult and problematic task. Differentiating between militants and civilians is troublesome for drone operators choosing targets because “there may not be a significant difference between the day-to-day behavior of Al-Qaeda and the day-to-day behavior of a civilian. In some strike zones, fighters regularly intermingle with civilians . . . and do not wear uniforms.”^xxxii On top of this, gathering posthumous data is equally difficult because “drone victims’ bodies are frequently dismembered, mutilated, and burned beyond recognition.”^xxxiii The Stanford and NYU Law Schools put together a comprehensive report on U.S. drone use in Pakistan that expounds upon extensive research quoting aggregate strike data. According to the report, the three most widely quoted sources for strike data are, “the Year of the Drone project by the New America Foundation think tank; The Long War Journal, a blog and project of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; and TBIJ [The Bureau of Investigative Journalism], a London-based journalism non-profit.”^xxxiv There exist discrepancies in the figures put forth by these sources, so the report details the methodologies employed by each in their strike-tracking data. The report concludes that:

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism maintains a much more dynamic database than either New America Foundation or The Long War Journal, updating its strike information frequently to reflect new information as it comes to light. This frequent updating, together with TBIJ’s own investigations, makes its data far more reliable than other aggregating sources.^xxxv

Based on this, we will rely on The Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s data as the most accurate and up-to-date source on drone casualties. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that from 2004-2014, there have been between 2,387 and 3,865 total drone casualties in Pakistan. Of these casualties, between 416 and 957 were civilians. From 2002-2014 in Yemen, The Bureau reports that confirmed drone strikes have left a death toll of between 362 and 531. Of these casualties, between 64 and 83 were civilians. They also report that in unconfirmed, possible extra drone strikes, between 345 and 553 people have been killed, with another 26 to 68 being civilians. Finally, The Bureau reports that,

Afghanistan is the most heavily drone-bombed country in the world… Yet there is no public record of when and where these strikes took place, or who they killed. Strangely, more is understood of the US’s secret campaigns in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia than about how drone use has evolved in Afghanistan.^xxxvi

Because of the decades of upheaval and the lack of any public record, drone casualty figures in Afghanistan are far harder to come by. But in spite of this difficulty, “The Bureau and others have used open sources – media reports, court affidavits, NGO reports and independent field investigations – to piece together a strike-by-strike picture of more than 450 strikes in the US’s covert campaigns, revealing at least 2,681 reported deaths, including 480 people or more who are described as civilians.”^xxxvii Although over 1,000 drone strikes have been known to hit Afghanistan in the War on Terror,^xxxviii these partial statistics will have to serve as a microcosm of the Afghanistan strikes in their entirety.

These raw numbers manifest that enormous civilian casualties have resulted from U.S. drone strikes. Additional Protocol I requires that civilians “not be the object of attack…unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.”^xxxix To clarify this principle of international customary law, The International Committee of the Red Cross has performed research and studies into defining just what these conditions are wherein a civilian relinquishes civilian status as meant by the phrase, “unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.” As follows is the conclusion the ICRC has come to:

The ICRC distinguishes the case of civilians engaged in a ‘continuous combat function,’ who make up the ‘organized fighting forces’ of a non-state actor, from ‘civilians who directly participate in hostilities on a merely spontaneous, sporadic, or unorganized basis, or who assume exclusively political, administrative or other non-combat functions.’ Civilians who engage in such temporary or non-combat conduct, the ICRC argues, may only be targeted for the time they are engaged in hostile conduct.^xl

Based on these definitions, when civilians engage in these specific hostile combat or noncombat functions, they become direct participants in hostilities and may be targeted. The previously enlisted civilian casualties were ordinary people not members of the non-state armed party.^xli In order to elucidate the innocence of the civilians who have been and continue to be brutally killed by drone strikes, we will look at specific reported cases that have been set out by firsthand narrative accounts and corroborated by “evidence from other independent investigations, media accounts, and submissions to the United Nations, and courts in the UK and Pakistan.”^xlii

We will look to three distinct drone strikes (among the numerous documented accounts) that resulted in significant civilian casualties. One case occurred on June 15, 2011 where United States drones fired missiles at a car travelling in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan, killing five. The U.S. initially thought all the casualties were militants, but media accounts and separate investigations by the Stanford/NYU report and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism have actually identified all the casualties as innocent civilians whom drone operators mistook for militants. As another instance, on January 23, 2009, U.S. drone strikes targeted two houses in Pakistan, “one in the village of Zeraki, North Waziristan, and one in Wana, South Waziristan.”^xliii Initial reports said, “the attacks struck suspected terrorist hideouts and killed at least 10 insurgents.”^xliv But two years after the attacks, an Islamabad attorney filed suit for numerous Waziri residents who had been injured by the drone strikes including “a fourteen-year boy who lost his left eye and suffered a fracture skull in the Zeraki blast.”^xlv The Bureau of Investigative Journalism “now reports that in the Zeraki strike at least seven and as many as 11 civilians were killed.”^xlvi And finally, the drone strike that occurred on March 17, 2011 in Pakistan is the most striking and famous account of civilian casualties. In this strike, “the US deployed a drone to fire at least two missiles into a large gathering near a bus depot in the town of Datta Khel, North Waziristan.”^xlvii This gathering was of some 40 individuals convening for a jirga—a government sanctioned “social institution for decision-making and dispute resolution.”^xlviii Present at this jirga were numerous tribal leaders and government officials. Reportedly, four Taliban members were also present—the reason for the drone strike. When the group was seated in discussion, two drone missiles were deployed and launched at the assembly. Evidence gathered from the Associated Press, the Pakistani military, and nine eyewitness testimonies suggest that “at least 42 were killed, mostly civilians.”^xlix

As substantiated by these accounts, innocent civilians are being killed by drone strikes and these civilian casualties are in grave violation of the principle of distinction and thus, International Humanitarian Law. Additional Protocol II, applying specifically to non-international armed conflicts like our case study, cements this customary legal precedent of Protocol I, stating, “The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against the dangers arising from military operations… unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.”^l Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 on conflicts not of an international character, too, echoes this stipulation, requiring that, “Persons taking no active part in the hostilities…be treated humanely.”^li These innocent, Yemeni, Pakistani, and Afghan civilians surely do not enjoy “general protection” from U.S. drone strikes or “humane treatment” as the drone-induced civilian death toll continues to climb, and “their presence terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities.”^lii In light of its negligence in distinguishing between civilians and militants when launching drone strikes, the United States has violated the binding customary principle of distinction and treaties it is party to, ultimately breaching International Humanitarian Law.

Furthermore, Additional Protocol I’s binding customary provisions, in which the proportionality principle are anchored in, provide further stipulations for just what the “general protection” clause of distinction must entail: prevented are indiscriminate attacks “which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”^liii It is apparent that United States drone strikes have indeed caused excessive incidental loss of life and injury to civilians in relation to the anticipated military advantage provided by drones. Using the casualty data provided by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, if we total up the averages of the confirmed civilian casualties ranges in Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan (1,240) and divide that by the total of the averages of all of the confirmed casualty ranges (6,254), we see that civilian casualties make up 19.8% of casualties resulting from U.S. drone strikes in the War on Terror. Comparatively, the Stanford/NYU report quotes a CNN estimate that just 2% of high-level targets have been killed as a percentage of total casualties.^liv This data shows that U.S. drones are indisputably killing an excessive number of civilians both in terms of the total number of casualties and the number of high-level targets that have been killed. 20% of all casualties being civilians clearly manifests recklessness on behalf of drone attacks and disproportionate civilian destruction. And civilian casualties outweighing high-level target casualties—the stated military advantage—by ten times clearly reflects a disproportionate excessiveness in relation to this anticipated military advantage. As such, the United States’ use of drone strikes has violated the proportionality principle as well as the principle of distinction, leading to further breach of International Humanitarian Law.

Ultimately, based on the prior legal analysis of drone usage in the War on Terror, drone strikes should be condemned as internationally illegal. But given that the international trend is toward a proliferation of drone usage, illegalization is not feasible. Going forward, multilateral oversight must be put in place to increase international transparency concerning drone programs and regulate further violations of International Humanitarian Law. No longer can nations go unpunished for indiscriminate drone strikes and blatant war crimes like the murdering of innocent civilians. International sanctions must be imposed so this ceases to be the norm concerning drones. On top of this, nations must be required to perform due diligence in obtaining accurate casualty data. International law already “requires states to ensure basic transparency and accountability for wrongs,”^lv but the international legal community has completely dropped the ball in enforcing this requirement. The drone programs currently in place throughout the world are so covert and opaque that accurate casualty figures are very difficult to obtain, allowing nations to be able to underreport civilian deaths. As of now, “US officials rarely mention civilian casualties by US drone strikes. When they do, they generally offer extremely low estimates in the single digits.”^lvi This denial is so egregious that U.S. officials still publicly maintain that all those killed in the jirga massacre in Datta Khel were insurgents.^lvii And such behavior is certainly not limited to the United States: the Pakistani government has attempted to “hide the fact of US strikes (and Pakistan’s role in them) by contending that the strikes were either Pakistani military operations, car bombs, or accidental explosions.”^lviii This is both unethical and illegal. The United Nations must set up a committee working jointly with the International Criminal Court that specifically oversees and regulates international drone programs. This committee must require that countries report back to it whenever they have executed drone strikes, and failure to do so would result in sanction. This committee would ensure documentation of any war crimes and violations of International Humanitarian Law and that perpetrating nations be held accountable. As the Stanford/NYU report agrees, “Partial and selective leaks to journalists and vague invocations of legal doctrine in talks in public fora are poor substitutes for proper transparency and oversight.”^lix The previously slated means for greater multilateral oversight of drone strikes would create a legitimate paper trail and usher in a new era of transparency and accountability. Such oversight must be instituted so that the international legal community upholds the utmost standards of jus in bello in the future.

 

Bibliography

Ahmad, Shakeel. A Legal Assessment of the US Drone Strikes in Pakistan.

International Criminal Law Review 13.4 (2013), 917-930.

Benson, Kristina. Kill ‘em and Sort It out Later: Signature Drone Strikes and  International Humanitarian Law. Pacific McGeorge Global                              Business & Development Law Journal 27.1 (2014), 17-51.

Crandall, Carla. Ready… Fire… Aim – A Case for Applying American Due Process  Principles before Engaging in Drone Strikes. Florida Journal                of International Law 24.1 (April 2012), 55-90.

Dep’t Of Defense, 331 Joint Publication 1-02, Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (2010) (amended July 15, 2012).

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. (2014). Get The Data: Drone Wars. Retrieved  from                                                                                                                     http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/dronesgraphs/

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Geneva Convention Relative to the  Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Fourth                     Geneva Convention), 12 August 1949, 75 UNTS 287, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b36d2.html

 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the                              Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977, 1125 UNTS 3, available at:                                                                       http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b36b4.html

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the                              Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II), 8 June 1977, 1125 UNTS 609, available at:                                                    http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b37f40.html

International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and  Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law. Living                     Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan. (2012).

Koh, Harold. (Director) (2010, March 25). The Obama Administration and International Law. Annual Meeting of the American Society of                         International Law.

Pugliese, Joseph. Prosthetics of Law and the Anomic Violence of Drones. Griffith Law Review 20.4 (2011), 931-961.

Ross, Alice. (2014, July 24). Who is dying in Afghanistan’s 1,000-plus drone strikes? The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Retrieved from                  https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/ 2014/07/24/who-is-dying-in- afghanistans-1000-plus-drone-strikes/

Satterhwaite, Margaret L. De-Torturing the Logic: The Contribution of Cat General  Comment 2 to the Debate over Extraordinary Rendition. New               York City Law Review 11.2 (2008), 281-292.

Sommaruga, Cornelio. Appeal by the International Committee of the Red Cross on the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Additional                               Protocols of 1977. International Committee of the Red Cross, 31 Oct. 1997.

Sterio, Milena. The United States’ Use of Drones in the War on Terror: The (Il)legality of  Targeted Killings under International Law. Case                           Western Reserve Journal of International Law 45.1 (Fall 2012), 197-214.

Vogel, Ryan J. Drone Warfare and the Law of Armed Conflict. Denver Journal of International Law and Policy 39.1 (2011).

                                               

ⁱ International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law. Living Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan. (2012), 8. ⁱⁱ Dep’t Of Defense, 331 Joint Publication 1-02, Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (2010) (amended July 15, 2012).

ⁱⁱⁱ International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law, supra p. 9. ^iv Ibid.

^v     Milena Sterio. The United States’ Use of Drones in the War on Terror: The (Il)legality of Targeted Killings under International Law. Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 45.1 (Fall 2012), 198.

^vi    International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law, supra p. 12.

^vii  Ryan J. Vogel. Drone Warfare and the Law of Armed Conflict. Denver Journal of

International Law and Policy 39.1 (2011), 105.

International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law, supra p. 12-13.

^ix                    Carla Crandall. Ready… Fire… Aim – A Case for Applying American Due Process Principles before Engaging in Drone Strikes. Florida Journal of International Law 24.1 (April 2012), 66.

^x                      Ibid., p. 69.     ^xi Ibid., p. 68.

^xii Margaret L. Satterhwaite. De-Torturing the Logic: The Contribution of Cat General Comment 2 to the Debate over Extraordinary Rendition. New York City Law Review 11.2

(2008), 289. ^xiii International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Geneva Convention Relative to the  Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Fourth Geneva Convention), 12 August 1949, 75 UNTS 287, 36.

^xiv Kristina Benson. Kill ‘em and Sort It out Later: Signature Drone Strikes and International Humanitarian Law. Pacific McGeorge Global Business & Development Law Journal 27.1 (2014), 23. ^xv Vogel, supra p. 113. ^xvi Benson, supra p. 24. ^xvii Shakeel Ahmad. A Legal Assessment of the US Drone Strikes in Pakistan.

International Criminal Law Review 13.4 (2013), 918. ^xviii Benson, supra p. 25-26. ^xix Ibid., p. 26.     ^xx Vogel, supra p. 113. ^xxi Benson, supra p. 27. ^xxii Ibid., p. 114.     ^xxiii Ibid., p. 115.

^xxiv International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977, 1125 UNTS 3, 25. ^xxv Ibid., p. 26.     ^xxvi Ibid.

^xxvii Harold Koh. (Director) (2010, March 25). The Obama Administration and International Law. Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law. ^xxviii Vogel, supra p. 115.

^xxix Ibid. ^xxx Sterio, supra p. 200.

^xxxi    Cornelio Sommaruga. Appeal by the International Committee of the Red Cross on the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Additional Protocols of 1977. International Committee of the Red Cross, 31 Oct. 1997.

^xxxii   Benson, supra p. 34.

^xxxiii International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law, supra p. 33.

^xxxiv  International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law, supra p. 43-44.

                                                                                                                                                

^xxxv   Ibid., p. 53.     ^xxxvi Alice Ross. (2014, July 24). Who is dying in Afghanistan’s 1,000-plus drone strikes? The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. xxxvii Ibid. xxxviii Ibid.

^xxxix International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), supra p. 26. ^xl Vogel, supra p. 120. ^xli International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law, supra p. vii. ^xlii Ibid., p. 57. ^xliii Ibid., p. 66.

^xliv Ibid. ^xlv Ibid., p. 67-68. ^xlvi Ibid., p. 68. ^xlvii Ibid., p. 57. ^xlviii Ibid., p. 58. ^xlix Ibid.

^l International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Protocol Additional to the Geneva  Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of NonInternational Armed Conflicts (Protocol II), 8 June 1977, 1125 UNTS 609, 319. ^li International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Geneva Convention Relative to the  Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Fourth Geneva Convention), supra p. 3637. ^lii International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law, supra p. vii.

^liii International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), supra p. 26. ^liv International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law, supra p. vii.

^lv Ibid., p. 122. ^lvi Ibid., p. 29. ^lvii Ibid., p. 57. ^lviii Ibid., p. 41. ^lix Ibid., p. 123.

 

---