On Thursday, 23 June CBS News reported on ORG's finding that there is a legal obligation to record all casualties of conflict, and that this applies to the CIA drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen.
The article can be read on the CBS website, and is reproduced in full below. This story was also reproduced in The Nation of Pakistan.
Group Warns Drone Users Violating Laws of War
Pamela Falk, Thursday 23 June 2011
As the Obama administration ramped up its use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, in the fight against Islamic militants on foreign soil, questions of legality and the rules of modern warfare became inevitable. The Pentagon now has 7,000 drones -- up from less than 50 in 2001 -- and the long-term consequences and benefits are yet to be determined.
Several rounds of questions have been raised by U.N. Special Envoys, particularly the Special Envoy for Extrajudicial Killings, about whether noncombatants (a CIA employee, for example) are covered by the laws of war (the Geneva Conventions).
A report released Thursday by the Oxford Research Group, an independent London think-tank, concludes that all parties involved in drone attacks are legally obligated to search for and identify all persons killed in such strikes.
Other requirements, according to the scholars' examination of current international law, include establishing official graves and a registration service for the dead.
"It is high time to implement a global casualty recording mechanism which includes civilians so that finally every casualty of every conflict is identified," wrote Susan Breau, the report's lead author and a professor of international law at Flinders University in Australia. "The law requires it, and drones provide no exemption from that requirement."
"Drone users cannot escape a legal responsibility to expose the human consequences of their attacks," adds Paul Rogers, an Oxford Research Group consultant and professor at Bradford University's Peace Studies Department in England.
Drones warfare: Science meets science fiction
The study is a comprehensive review of current treaty-based and customary international laws of war.
But it may not have much impact on the Pentagon or Obama administration's policy.
Several U.S. Supreme Court cases on Guantanamo detainees have rejected the impact of the international treaties cited by the Oxford Research Group's report on U.S. law, as they are not self-executing and do not carry the same weight as federal law.
And the U.S. Defense Department might view the concept of collecting and identifying bodies and establishing a registry for the dead as defeating the point of a war conducted largely without troops on the ground - as has been the case in Pakistan.
But that's not the point of the study.
The report attempts to deal with the impact of an unmanned and sometimes unidentified killing -- a new grey area of ethics in the conflicting laws of war.
Drone warfare is, doubtless, a relatively new phenomenon, and some analysts think it should be considered exceptional.
"It is the considered view of this administration - and it has certainly been my experience during my time as legal adviser - that U.S. targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war," White House legal adviser Harold Hongju Koh said in a speech to the American Society of International law in Washington last March.
Nonetheless, Breau notes in the new study that drones "are fast becoming the weapons of choice by the United States and its allies in South Asia and the Middle East, yet their use raises major questions about legality which have been very largely ignored. A key and salutary finding of this report is that drone users cannot escape a legal responsibility to expose the human consequences of their attacks."
With the technology developing to create unmanned drones the size of insects, this debate is surely just beginning.
Read More:
Media coverage on this issue:
‘Drone Warfare: Cost and Challenge’, Paul Rogers on OpenDemocracy
'Conflict Parties 'Legally Obligated' to Record Civilian Casualties', ABC South Australia television interview with Professor Breau
‘Report Questions Legality of Drone Strikes’, Time.com
'Hit and Run' Drone Strikes Are 'Breaking Laws of War', Channel 4
Read More From ORG:
The discussion paper that this coverage is based on: ‘Discussion Paper: Drone Attacks, International Law, and the Recording of Civilians of Armed Conflict’
Press release on this finding: 'Press Release: Drones Don't Allow Hit and Run - If You Use Drones You Must Confirm and Report Who They Killed, Says Legal Team'
Presentation by Professor Breau of this finding at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy
The original discussion paper identifying the legal obligation to record casualties: 'Discussion Paper: The Legal Obligation to Record Civilian Casualties of Armed Conflict'
Our paper discussing different efforts to record the casualties of drone attacks in Pakistan: ‘Working Paper: The Drone Wars and Pakistan’s Conflict Casualties, 2010’