This is hardly surprising given that the fact that it is hardly a secret that drone strikes kill civilians and that courts in Pakistan have declared U.S. drone strikes in their country to be illegal.
The 22-page interim report, produced by Ben Emmerson, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, looks at strikes in hotbeds like Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Gaza.
In his report (note: link opens a Google document), Emmerson calls on the United States to declassify documents on drone operations coordinated by the CIA. The final report won’t be submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council until 2014, according to Lawfare.
He also calls on the U.S. to clarify its official position on the legality of unmanned aerial strikes, something which they’ve claimed is totally legal in the past, even when they target U.S. citizens.
Of course, when it comes to actually saying why it is legal in a court of law, the Obama administration maintains that the program is too secret to discuss. This position was upheld by a federal judge who ruled that the Obama administration can claim it is legal without ever explaining why.
Emmerson calls on the U.S. to “release its own data on the level of civilian casualties inflicted through the use of remotely piloted aircraft, together with information on the evaluation methodology used,” all of which is currently secret.
The interim report was published to coincide by a related report released on Thursday by Christof Heyns, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. That report, “warned that the technology was being misused as a form of ‘global policing,’” the Guardian reports.
Pakistan’s government reported that up to 330 drone strikes have targeted their north-western tribal region since 2004, with up to 2,200 people killed. At least 400 of those were civilians, according to Pakistan’s government figures.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that 407-926 civilians have been killed since 2004.
However, Emmerson says that civilians being killed or injured does not mean that the drone program is contrary to international humanitarian law.
“While the fact that civilians have been killed or injured does not necessarily point to a violation of international humanitarian law, it undoubtedly raises issues of accountability and transparency,” the report states.
In Yemen, Emmerson found that as many as 58 civilians may have been killed in drone attacks.
He states in the report that the CIA’s involvement with the U.S. drone strikes has created “an almost insurmountable obstacle to transparency.”
“One consequence is that the United States has to date failed to reveal its own data on the level of civilian casualties inflicted through the use of remotely piloted aircraft in classified operations conducted in Pakistan and elsewhere,” the report states.
However, when a study investigated the result of drone strikes in Afghanistan, it found that 10 times more civilians were killed than in manned strikes.
Furthermore, when individuals in Washington, like Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) have made public statements about the civilian deaths in drone strikes, they have been entirely misleading.
“If used in strict compliance with the principles of international humanitarian law, remotely piloted aircraft are capable of reducing the risk of civilian casualties in armed conflict by significantly improving the situational awareness of military commanders,” Emmerson acknowledges in the report.
However, he notes that there is “no clear international consensus” on laws that control the use of drone strikes. Therefore, he calls on the U.S. to clarify the legal position, declassify relevant information as much as possible and release the currently secret data on civilian deaths.
On Oct. 25, a debate on the use of drones will occur in the United Nations general assembly. Emmerson’s report will almost certainly influence that debate.
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