scholarly journals The enduring problem of ‘grey’ drone violence

Author(s):  
Christian Enemark

Abstract This article addresses the problem of drone violence that is ‘grey’ in the sense of being hard to categorise. It focuses on circumstances, such as arose in Pakistan, in which a foreign government's armed drones are a constant presence. A lesson from US experience there is that the persistent threat of drone strikes is intended to suppress activities that endanger the drone-using state's security. However, this threat inevitably affects innocent people living within potential strike zones. To judge such drone use by reference to military ethics principles is to assume that ‘war’ is going on, but indefinite drone deployments are difficult to conceptualise as war, so traditional Just War thinking does not suffice as a basis for moral judgement. In assessing the US government's commitment to drone-based containment of risks emerging along its ‘terror frontier’, the article considers three alternative conceptualisations of drone violence arising in non-war contexts: vim (‘force short of war’), terrorism, and imperialism. It then rejects all three and proposes that such violence is better conceptualised as being merely ‘quasi-imperialistic’. On this basis, however, the sustaining of a drone strike campaign against a series of suspected terrorists can still be condemned as violating the right to life.

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Jimmy Chia-Shin Hsu

Abstract In this article, I bring the constitutional jurisprudence of major East Asian courts into reconstructive dialogue with that of the United States, South Africa, and several former Soviet-bloc countries, on per se review of capital punishment. This fills in a gap in the literature, which has failed to reflect new developments in Asia. Besides analysing various review approaches, I extrapolate recurrent analytical issues and reconstruct dialogues among these court decisions. Moreover, I place the analysis in historical perspective by periodising the jurisprudential trajectory of the right to life. The contextualised reconstructive dialogues offer multilayered understanding of my central analytical argument: for any court that may conduct per se review of capital punishment in the future, the highly influential South African Makwanyane case does not settle the lesson. The transnational debate has been kept open by the Korean Constitutional Court's decisions, as well as retrospectively by the US cases of Furman and Gregg. This argument has two major points. First, the crucial part of the reasoning in Makwanyane, namely that capital punishment cannot be proven to pass the necessity test under the proportionality review, is analytically inconclusive. The Korean Constitutional Court's decision offers a direct contrast to this point. Second, the exercise of proportionality review of the Makwanyane Court does not attest to the neutrality and objectivity of proportionality review. Rather, what is really dispositive of the outcome are certain value choices inhering in per se review of capital punishment.


Author(s):  
Christof Heyns ◽  
Dapo Akande ◽  
Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne ◽  
Thompson Chengeta

This chapter provides a holistic examination of the international legal frameworks which regulate targeted killings by drones. It argues that for a particular drone strike to be lawful, it must satisfy the legal requirements under all applicable international legal regimes. It is argued that the legality of a drone strike under the jus ad bellum does not preclude the wrongfulness of that strike under international humanitarian law or international human rights law. The chapter then considers the important legal challenges that the use of armed drones poses under each of the three legal frameworks mentioned above. It considers the application of the right to life in armed conflict, particularly in territory not controlled by the state conducting the strike. The chapter then turns to some of the key controversies in the application of international humanitarian law to drone strikes, such as the possibility of a global non-international armed conflict and the question of who may be targeted in a non-international armed conflict. The final substantive section considers the law relating to the use of force by states against non-state groups abroad.


2021 ◽  
Vol 258 ◽  
pp. 05007
Author(s):  
Lan Hien Do

For a long time, social awareness still asserts that religion with a supernatural belief system will bring people peace and help believers face challenges of life. People who perform religious rituals will create a “mechanism” to fight stress, reduce psychological stress, and even cure illnesses. But another reality exists, religious beliefs can be a factor causing people to behave in the wrong way such as killing innocent people, committing suicide or threatening the right to life, the right to political, social stability, the right to religious freedom of others. Religion can become an opportunity, power to control human security, community security, social security, more extensively national security and ideological maintenance of that nation. Therefore, it is necessary to study the topic of religious security adequately with the extent of its influence. In this article, I will analyze the current situation of religious security in Vietnam by assessing the religious activities.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-241
Author(s):  
Jessica Lynn Corsi

This article argues that the thousands of lethal drone strikes conducted since 2001 violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (iccpr), and in particular, the right to life. The analysis provided is also applicable to the right to life enshrined in customary international law and regional human rights treaties. While most legal and academic commentary on deaths caused by drones has focused on an international humanitarian law (ihl) framework—perhaps because the primary weaponised drone user, the United States, insists that this is the appropriate legal context—this article argues that a human rights framework for assessing lethal drone strikes is preferable, useful, and necessary. Not only is it likely that the so-called war on terror is a semantic rather than a legal war, the iccpr continues to apply during conflict. Moreover, opacity surrounds most lethal drone strikes, which the Trump administration appears likely to increase, while simultaneously reducing Obama-era safeguards. In that context, a human rights assessment, which will be inherently more stringent towards fatalities than an ihl framework, is urgently needed. The article concludes that the right to life attaches to everyone regardless of the territory in which they are targeted; that effective jurisdiction and control is satisfied upon ability to lethally target an individual; that relevant iccpr rights apply in ungoverned territories as well; and that the threat of terrorism does not displace these rights or the applicability of the iccpr.


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 408-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil C Renic

The growing ability of the US to kill with impunity in war has prompted some to question whether such advantage challenges the moral justifications for inter-combatant violence. This scholarship, however, has yet to properly clarify both the explicit and tacit role of reciprocal risk within this moral determination. A systematic explanation is needed of the function of risk in the right to kill in war. This article engages with the in bello component of the Just War Tradition to determine: first, the role of reciprocal risk in the moral justifications for killing in war; and, second, the extent to which these justifications may be challenged within conditions of radical asymmetry, exemplified today by the unmanned aerial vehicle exclusive violence of the US. The first three sections of this article each review an account of Just War: conventionalism, revisionism and contractarianism. It is argued that the coherence of each of these moral accounts, particularly in terms of the permissiveness of inter-combatant violence, is grounded in an assumption of collective reciprocal risk. Radically asymmetric conditions of battle render ambiguous what would otherwise be a morally unproblematic use of military violence. This article will conclude by highlighting how this challenge manifests in practice, through analysis of the ongoing unmanned aerial vehicle exclusive violence of the US. The radical differentials of physical risk that characterise this violence threaten to erode the capacity of the US to interpret and apply standard judgements of Just War theory against those it targets.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-32

The relevance of the work is determined by the fact that the right to life belongs to the basic constitutional human rights, therefore, its observance and protection is the duty of the state. Despite its undeniable importance, today the right to life anywhere in the world is not really ensured in sufficient quantities. The constitutional consolidation of the right to life raises a number of issues related to the concept, nature, legislative and practical implementation of this right. It should be noted that various aspects of the human right to life were considered in the scientific works of G.B. Romanovsky, O.G. Selikhova, T.M. Fomichenko, A.B. Borisova, V.A. Ershov and other Russian authors. The aim of the study is to study and comparative analysis of the legal content of the constitutional norm that defines the right to life, to comprehend and identify possible problems of the implementation of this right. To achieve this goal, this article discusses relevant issues of ensuring the right to life, proclaimed by Article 20 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and Article 27 of the Constitution of Azerbaijan Republic. The results of a comparative analysis of these constitutional norms and the relevant norms of industry law allow us to determine, that there is no contradiction between Article 20 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the norms of the criminal legislation of the Russian Federation, which imply the death penalty as an exceptional measure of punishment, because a moratorium has been imposed on the death penalty in the Russian Federation since April 16, 1997. However, after the abolition of the death penalty in the criminal legislation of the Republic of Azerbaijan in 1998, there was a discrepancy between parts II and III of Article 27 of the Constitution of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the criminal legislation of Azerbaijan Republic that requires the introduction of the necessary changes in the content of the analyzed constitutional norm. The value of the work is determined by the fact that the introduction of appropriate changes will contribute to the further improvement of the Constitution of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the effective implementation of the right to life of everyone.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-108
Author(s):  
Dinda Izzati

Evidently, a few months after the Jakarta Charter was signed, Christian circles from Eastern Indonesia submitted an ultimatum, if the seven words in the Jakarta Charter were still included in the Preamble to the 1945 Constitution, then the consequence was that they would not want to join the Republic of Indonesia. The main reason put forward by Pastor Octavian was that Indonesia was seen from its georaphical interests and structure, Western Indonesia was known as the base of Islamic camouflage, while eastern Indonesia was the basis for Christian communities. Oktavianus added that Christians as an integral part of this nation need to realize that they also have the right to life, religious rights, political rights, economic rights, the same rights to the nation and state as other citizens, who in fact are mostly Muslims. This paper aims to determine and understand the extent to which the basic assumptions of the Indonesian people view the role of Islam as presented in an exclusive format.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (63) ◽  
pp. 216
Author(s):  
O. Sovgyria ◽  
A. Yanchuk

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