The Right to Life and the International Law Framework Regulating the Use of Armed Drones

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.

Insecurity and Human Rights

The twenty-first-century challenge that the chapter faces is how to ensure that positive rights to state protection are properly balanced against duties of state restraint in a climate of insecurity. It argues that, contrary to conservative caricatures, human rights are not only liberal ‘politically correct’ mechanisms of state restraint. Rather they have become increasingly associated with the extension of state coercion, a process which risks securitizing human rights. While courts have had to balance carefully between these imperatives, politicians and philosophers are less keenly aware of the danger that human rights will be instrumentalized to legitimize overblown claims to state coercive protection. The chapter concludes by arguing that we can follow the lead of courts, who have had to confront the nuanced balance between duties of protection and restraint, and start to embrace a concept of ‘tolerable insecurity’. Only by embracing the risks that come with freedom can we have a productive debate about the relationship between insecurity and human rights.

‘Sustainable Security’

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 commits the international community to promoting ‘just, peaceful and inclusive societies’ with a clear focus on security. Central to the goal, is the creation of ‘strong’ national institutions. Rather than taking this to licence the creation of repressive institutions, this chapter argues that SDG 16 invites a radical re-imagining of dominant discourses on security. This would see interpersonal insecurity as a core concern that must be addressed together with geopolitical insecurity, and recognize that strong institutions are those that are robust, well-resourced, responsive, and well-governed. In the absence of a shift towards sustainability in our pursuit of security, the transformative potential of Sustainable Development Goal 16 will be difficult to realize; indeed, the goal may instead be used to legitimate oppressive, repressive, and often fundamentally undemocratic measures and institutions said to be needed to prevent violence and combat terrorism and crime.

Global Consequentialism and the Morality and Laws of War

Rights-based and consequentialist approaches to ethics are often seen as being diametrically opposed to one another. This is entirely understandable, since to say that X has a (moral) right to Y is in part to assert that there are (moral) reasons to provide X with Y even if doing so foreseeably will not lead to better consequences. However, a ‘global’ form of consequentialism raises the possibility of some sort of reconciliation: it could be that the best framework for the regulation of international affairs (say) is one that employs a notion of rights, but if so, that (according to global consequentialism) is the case because regulating international affairs in that manner tends, as a matter of empirical fact, to lead to better consequences. By way of case study, this chapter applies these ideas to a recent dispute about the morality and laws of war, between Jeff McMahan and Henry Shue.

The Paris Agreement as a Human Rights Treaty

This chapter examines the Paris Agreement on climate change in light of international human rights law, with particular attention to the human rights language included in the Paris Agreement. The chapter reviews the efforts over the previous decade to characterize climate change as a threat to human rights; describes the evolution of human rights obligations relating to environmental harm in general and to climate change in particular; and assesses the new climate regime in light of these norms. It concludes that the Paris Agreement is consistent with the human rights obligations relating to climate change in many respects, but that states must strengthen their commitments in order to fulfil those obligations completely. Finally, the chapter examines how human rights norms may influence climate policy in the future.

The State of Play and the Road Ahead

Human rights are a key element of the post-Second World War international order. They function as both an institutional framework and as a powerful idea, and have been adopted and adapted by those seeking to address the most pressing problems of their age. The framers of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) never dreamed of including environmental rights in the list of rights that are fundamental to a decent human life. By the first decades of the twenty-first century, however, it has become clear that environmental problems like climate change generate profound human rights impacts. A sustainable environment is essential to the enjoyment of all human rights, now and henceforth, but extending rights into the future raises many complex questions about the relationship between rights and risk, the right to procreate, and whether and how future people can have human rights.

Poverty and Human Rights

This chapter argues that human rights and the SDGs should work together to eliminate extreme poverty. The goals articulated in the SDG agenda should be closely tied to legally binding human rights instruments so that they are viewed as entitlements, rather than policy aspirations. Conversely, the SDGs should be used to provide detailed content to binding human rights. This requires a reconfiguration of human rights, and particularly the traditional assumptions that the role of human rights is to protect individuals against state interference, which militates against effective engagement of human rights in addressing poverty. Instead, freedom requires the state to facilitate realization of individual capabilities; individuals should be regarded as achieving fulfilment through social relationships; and equality should be substantive rather than formal. From these starting points, poverty can be seen to be a gross violation of human rights, requiring immediate and concerted action from state and non-state actors alike.

The Promise and Pitfalls of the Sustainable Development Goals

This chapter will critically address the contribution of a human rights-based approach in addressing persistent poverty. Using the commitments of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a lens, it will examine how a human rights approach should influence the conceptualization and measurement of poverty, and the policies and financing instruments used to tackle it. The authors examine several crucial policy and action areas, such as social protection, gender equality, fiscal policy, improving participation and accountability, and contrast the prevailing ‘traditional’ development approach with an approach grounded in human rights. It asks how far we have come in changing the paradigm and what are the crucial actions needed to realize the ‘transformation’ envisaged in the SDGs, including the elimination of extreme poverty.

State of Play and the Road Ahead

This introductory chapter draws from, and builds on, the three chapters on human rights and poverty in this edited volume. It explores those contributions with an eye to what they advocate and as a basis for exposing obstacles to bringing human rights to bear on poverty and material inequality. Three key features that characterize the world today are addressed: a multilevel democratic deficit, a harmful commitment to growth, and a categorical absence of accountability for the state of poverty and inequality. This chapter reflects on the state of play and the road ahead and concludes by, querying whether international law in fact values people living in poverty and the limits of the human rights project in seeking to ensure that that it does.

Human Rights, Population, and Climate Change

This chapter explores the relationship between human rights, population and climate change. Some argue that to address climate change it is necessary to implement policies that reduce world population growth and perhaps also population size. This chapter examines two ways of approaching this issue, both of which focus on what human rights people have. One calls for limits on people's human right to reproductive choice. A second approach holds that respecting core human rights will be sufficient to tackle the demographic drivers of climate change. This chapter critically evaluates both accounts and proposes a third one that builds on the second approach but goes beyond it.