Drone Attacks and UN Burden: Current State of Suspended Animation Cannot Last

Rasa - A two-year probe by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Drones in London has revealed that the number of military operations facilitated by the British government in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia has been growing without any public scrutiny.

News ID: 438746

Date: 20 July 2018 - 23:13

RNA - The probe suggests that the British government is complicit in killing civilians and risks being prosecuted over illegal drone operations. The major probe should do the next best thing: There are many other governments that are also directly involved in murdering innocent civilians and committing crimes against humanity that are yet to be prosecuted. These governments include many NATO members plus Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and a host of others.

In violation of International Law and UN Charter, and together with the United States, they have been launching indiscriminate military operations and drone attacks against innocent civilians or assisting each other with intelligence, personnel, money and logistics in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Gaza, and without international scrutiny. They are yet to be prosecuted for killing civilians and they are yet to be held to account in The Hague.

Worse still, drones have become a normal part of the unlawful business of gathering intelligence and murdering civilians outside of those armed conflicts, and the United Nations is not doing anything about it. This is while there is no UN authorization for the bombings of Syria and Yemen and such attacks are set to increase in the future.

This kind of indifference and approach towards the international violations of the United States and its allies leaves an expanding oversight and accountability gap on the part of the UN. It makes the UN vulnerable to criminal liability in the US-led unlawful strikes that violate International Law.

It is time for the UN to wake up to the catastrophe in the Middle East. In the starkest possible terms, through its silence and inaction, and because of its inability to stop the lucrative global arms trade and implement the arms trade treaty, the world body is part of the problem.

The UN can and should exert concerted pressure on the US and a handful of NATO allies to suspend future licences for arms transfers to countries directly engaged in the Syria and Yemen conflicts. Such pressure in the past by the international civil society and human rights groups managed to finally draw the line for some Western governments, but that was not enough. Many past arms suspensions have often been short-lived and reversed when the pressure abated – and, crucially, arms under current deals are still being shipped to the Persian Gulf.

According to Fars News Agancy, the UN can still make a difference though, because public opinion in the West still supports an end to the wars and arming Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the UAE. A growing legal and moral quandary now faces Western supplier countries that still pour weapons into the conflicts in the Middle East. Under the arms trade treaty, the UN has an obligation to force these Western supplier countries to halt the supply of their weapons as they are being used for serious violations of international human rights or humanitarian law.

The world body should also exert pressure on the US and its allies to stop their illegal drone attacks and end their wars of attrition in Syria and Yemen. The US-led coalition should not be allowed to further undermine the treaty’s object and purpose, which includes reducing human suffering.

Endangering human life and murdering civilians for profit should be a universal crime. The burden rests with the UN and the world legal community and with the human-rights lobbies and non-governmental organizations. They can either persist in averting their gaze from the egregious impunity enjoyed by the notorious war criminals and lawbreakers led by the United Sates, or they can become seized by the exalted standards to which they continually hold other UN member states.

The current state of suspended animation cannot be allowed to last forever. If the courts and lawyers of the UN and those in The Hague refuse to do their duty, we shall be all put to shame.

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