Finally, the United Nations General Assembly has adopted a resolution calling on states that use Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, as a counterterrorism measure to comply with international law regarding human rights violations. The United Nations charter gives much importance to human rights. The UN is the first intergovernmental body where human rights have been documented in the charter of the organisation. Pre-1945, relations between the state and its citizens were regarded as a purely domestic affair falling under the jurisdiction of the state but, in the post-1945 era, individuals became a subject of international law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights directly addressed the people of the world. Articles 55 and 56 of the UN charter stress the protection and promotion of human rights and oblige member states to respect human rights.
As a matter of fact, theory and practice always differ from each other as has been the case with human rights. The Cold War’s power politics made it impossible for the UN to exert its authority with regard to human rights. In the post-Cold War period, following the former Yugoslavia’s disintegration process, humanitarian concerns once again drew the attention of the international community and the concepts of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and ‘responsibility to protect’ were put forward to address human rights concerns. These concepts entail that if a state fails to protect its citizens from “genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” then it becomes a collective responsibility of the international community to protect the citizens. Such concepts raised serious concerns regarding state sovereignty.
The concept of state sovereignty, along with territorial integrity and political independence, as enunciated by the Peace of Treaty Westphalia in 1648, has been the basis of the modern state system since the 17th century. These principles were endorsed by the UN charter. Article 2(4) of the UN charter prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity of any state. Article 2(7) prevents intervention in the internal affairs of a state by any other state. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has been recognised as the only body to authorise the use of force against any state if there is a threat to peace, breach of peace or act of aggression. The post-Cold War world saw a controversy between human rights issues and concepts of state sovereignty.
Post-9/11, counterterrorism, with its controversial tools such as drones, has been much criticised by human rights activists. The states, which are targets of drone strikes, have been facing a ‘sovereignty dilemma’ in their relations with regional rival states and a sense of helplessness is prevailing at home on how to justify the drone war that is causing human and material loss. Pakistan presents the worst scenario as being the target of the highest number of drone strikes since 2004.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, during his visit to the US, has raised the issue of drone strikes and described it as a major irritant in Pak-US relations. During his meeting with President Obama, the prime minister called for an end to drone strikes. The prime minister’s visit coincided with the release of the Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reports about civilian casualties in drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. Earlier, in October, the United Nations report, after a detailed study, termed US drone policy a threat to global peace and security and called upon the US to show transparency in this regard.
This is not the first time that the legality of drone strikes has been questioned. A year ago, two prominent US law schools, Stanford Law School and New York University School of Law, conducted a joint research in September 2012 and rejected the US narrative about the efficiency of drones in counterterrorism strategy and termed the use of drones as counterproductive, resulting in civilian casualties.
Human rights organisations, though less vocal in this regard, have time and again initiated the debate to deliberate upon the rules and procedures of international law and international humanitarian law regarding drone warfare. The self-proclaimed efficacy of drones as a counterterrorism tool having credentials for damage limitation and a precision strike has been constantly challenged now.
It is to see how far the United Nations General Assembly will be able to make states comply with the rules of international law and what mechanism to regulate the UAVs will be adopted but we must appreciate the intensive efforts of the Pakistani delegation, which has been continuously trying to raise the issue at the highest world forum. Instead of hiding the facts, ensuring accountability and transparency should be an integral part of counterterrorism operations.
The writer works at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI)