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UN Expert: Need for transparency on drones

Drones are the weapon of choice at the moment - or so it would seem as the US uses them increasingly in the dark shadow of legality.  

A call for more transparency about these drones, and how they are used, comes from the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings. 

"A UN expert has called for nations that operate armed drones to be more transparent and ‘publicly disclose’ how they use them.

In a report prepared for the UN, Christof Heyns, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, points to international secrecy surrounding who owns armed drones, how they are operated, and who they are killing.

He also warns against ‘wide and permissive interpretations’ of international law to justify lethal attacks using the capabilities offered by armed drones.

The report is the first of two major papers on drone strikes due to be presented to the UN this month. The second, by Ben Emmerson, special rapporteur on counter-terrorism, will be published next week.

Heyns highlights ‘concern that there is uncertainty about which States are developing and acquiring armed drones’ in addition to how nations use them.

He says nations have an obligation to publish details such as their targeting criteria, civilian casualties and investigations – and drone operations should not be run by institutions that are prevented from publishing such details. The CIA, which runs drone operations in Pakistan, operates under tight classification controls".

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