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‘Targeted killing’ and the lack of acquiescence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2019

Elisabeth Schweiger
Elisabeth Schweiger*
Affiliation:
University of York, Department of Politics, YO10 5DD, York, United Kingdom
*
Email: elisabeth.schweiger@york.ac.uk
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Abstract

Over the last decade, the concept targeted killing has received much attention in debates on the customary interpretation of the right to self-defence, particularly in the context of practices such as US armed drone attacks. In these debates, government silence has often been invoked as acquiescence to the jus ad bellum aspects of targeted killing. Focusing on the question of state silence on targeted killing practices by the Israeli and US governments in recent years, this article investigates over 900 UN Security Council and Human Rights Council debates and argues that there has been no tacit consent to targeted killing. The analysis firstly shows that the majority of states have condemned Israeli targeted killing practices and have raised concerns about armed drone attacks, while falling short of directly protesting against US practices. The article, secondly, applies the customary international law requirements for acquiescence and challenges the idea that silence on US armed drone attacks can be understood as a legal stance towards targeted killing. The article, finally, investigates the political context and engages with alternative interpretations of silence. Contextualizing acts of protest and lack of protest within an asymmetrical political context, the article posits that the invocation of silence as acquiescence in the case of targeted killing is problematic and risks complicity of legal knowledge production with the violence of hegemonic actors.

Keywords

acquiescencearmed drone attacksself-defencestate silencetargeted killing
Type
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Information
Leiden Journal of International Law , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 741 - 757
Copyright
© Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2019 

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38 It has thus been argued that ‘the armed conflict between U.S. military forces and those of the Taliban inside and outside of Afghanistan since October 7, 2001 is an international armed conflict’ within the framework of which ‘all of the customary laws of war apply’, see Paust, supra note 28, at 261.

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50 See E. Schweiger, ‘The Lure of Novelty: “Targeted Killing” and Its Older Terminological Siblings’, OUP, 3 June 2019, available at doi.org/10.1093/ips/olz006

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55 Brookman-Byrne, supra note 30.

56 UNSC, United Nations Security Council Debate (4929th Meeting): The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question, UN Doc. S/PV.4929(2004).

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid.; see also Algeria, United Kingdom, Pakistan, Chile, Russia, Spain, Germany, France, Libya, Egypt, Quatar, the League of Arab States, Bahrain, Ireland, Jordan, Tunisia, and Indonesia.

59 UNSC, United Nations Security Council Debate (4945th Meeting): The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question, UN Doc. S/PV.4945(2004).

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid.

62 Representative of Jordan in UNSC, UN Doc. S/PV.4929(2004), supra note 56.

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66 The representative of Austria for example ‘supported the Secretary-General’s call to ensure that attacks by armed drones complied fully with international humanitarian law and human rights laws’ in UNSC, United Nations Security Council Debate (7109th Meeting): Protection of civilians in armed conflict UN Doc. S/PV.7109(2014), 44; see also UNSC, United Nations Security Council Debate (6980th Meeting): Children and armed conflict - Report of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict (S/2013/245), UN Doc. S/PV.6980(2013); UNSC, United Nations Security Council Debate (6917th Meeting): Protection of civilians in armed conflict - Letter dated 4 February 2013 from the Permanent Representative of the Republicof Korea to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General (S/2013/75), UN Doc S/PV.6917(2013).

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69 Ibid., para. 37.

70 Ibid., para. 33.

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72 Ibid.; amongst them Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa.

73 Ibid.; USA, UK, Japan, France, Republic of Korea, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

74 Ibid.

75 HRC, UN Doc. A/HRC/28/38(2014), supra note 2.

76 Ibid., para. 31.

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78 Ibid.

79 HRC, Resolution Ensuring Use of Remotely Piloted Aircraft or Armed Drones in Counter-Terrorism and Military Operations in Accordance with International Law, Including International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, UN Doc. A/70/53(2015), 34–5.

80 HRC, UN Doc. A/HRC/28/38(2014), supra note 2, para. 37.

81 UNGA, Protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, UN Doc. A/RES/68/178(2013), para. 6(s).

82 UNGA, UN Doc. A/68/389(2013), supra note 25.

83 HRC, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms While Countering Terrorism, UN Doc. A/HRC/34/61(2017), 61.

84 Plaw and Reis, supra note 8; Anderson, supra note 2.

85 ILC, UN Doc. A/CN.4/682, supra note 7, para. 22.

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88 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1155 UNTS 331, Art. 53.

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91 North Sea Continental Shelf Case (Federal Republic of Germany/Denmark; Federal Republic of Germany/Netherlands), Merits, Judgment of 20 February 1969, [1969] ICJ Rep. 3 (Judge Lachs, Dissenting Opinion).

92 ILC, UN Doc. A/CN.4/682, supra note 7, para. 21.

93 See Sovereignty over Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh, Middle Rocks and South Ledge (Malaysia/Singapore), Merits, Judgment of 23 May 2008, [2008] ICJ Rep. 12, para. 121.

94 E. Schweiger, ‘Listen closely: what silence can tell us about legal knowledge production’, November 2018, London Review of International Law, available at academic.oup.com/lril/article-abstract/6/3/391/5382550?redirectedFrom=fulltext.

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96 Fisheries case, supra note 89.

97 ILC, UN Doc. A/CN.4/682, supra note 7, para. 24.

98 Honduras Borders (Guatemala v. Honduras), Judgment of 23 January 1933 [1933], UN Reports of International Arbitral Awards 1307, 1327.

99 See, for example, The White House, Fact Sheet, supra note 27.

100 A. Birdsall, ‘Drone Warfare in Counterterrorism and Normative Change: US Policy and the Politics of International Law’, (2018) 32 Global Security 241.

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111 ‘US Warns Russia over Georgia Strike’, 13 September 2002, BBC News, available at news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2254959.stm.

112 UNSC, UN Doc. S/PV.4588(2002), supra note 64.

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118 HRC, UN Doc. A/HRC/14/24/Add.6(2010), supra note 2, para. 13.

119 Brookman-Byrne, supra note 30.

120 ILC, UN Doc. A/CN.4/682, supra note 7, para. 23.

121 Ibid.; G. Danilenko, Law-Making in the International Community (1993), 108.

122 See, for a similar argument, Linderfalk, supra note 52, at 932.

123 ILC, UN Doc. A/CN.4/682, supra note 7.

124 Ibid.

125 ILC, Identification of Customary International Law. Text of the Draft Conclusions Provisionally Adopted by the Drafting Committee, UN Doc. A/CN.4/L.872(2016), Conclusion 10(3) (emphasis added).

126 Starski, supra note 54, at 38.

127 Brookman-Byrne, supra note 30.

128 See, for example, House of Lords, House of Commons, Joint Committee on Human Rights, supra note 2; Dorsey and Paulussen, ICCT Research Paper, supra note 1; A. Dworkin, ‘Policy Brief: Drones and Targeted Killing: Defining a European Position’, July 2013, European Council on Foreign Relations, available at www.ecfr.eu/page/-/ECFR84_DRONES_BRIEF.pdf.

129 Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, ‘Doc. 13928, Reply to Recommendation 2069, Drones and Targeted Killings: The Need to Uphold Human Rights and International Law’, 8 December 2015, available at http://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/Xref-XML2HTML-en.asp?fileid=22301&lang=en.

130 Ibid., para 2.

131 HRC, UN Doc. A/HRC/28/38(2014), supra note 2, para. 56.

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134 Ibid.

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136 Krasmann, supra note 2, at 668.

137 See particularly the 2004 Security Council debate UNSC, UN Doc. S/PV.4945(2004), supra note 59.

138 UNSC, UN Doc. S/PV.5411(2006), supra note 65.

139 Ibid.

140 ILC, UN Doc. A/CN.4/682, para. 22.

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143 Dworkin, supra note 128, at 2.

144 B. Stern, ‘Custom at the Heart of International Law’, in P. Reuter, Mélanges offerts à Paul Reuter: le droit international, unité et diversité (1981), 89, 93, available at fr.scribd.com/document/137206779/Brigitte-Stern-Custom-at-the-Heart-of-International-Law (translated by M. Byers and A. Denise); Anghie, A., ‘Finding the Peripheries: Sovereignty and Colonialism in Nineteenth-Century International Law’, (1999) 40 Harvard International Law Journal 1 Google Scholar; Chimni, B. S., ‘Customary International Law: A Third World Perspective’, (2018) 112 American Journal of International Law 1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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146 The 1986 counterterrorism attack by the US in Libya was met with vehement protest during the ensuing Security Council debates, see UNSC, UN Doc. S/PV.2675(1986); while there were few objections to US counterterrorism attacks in Iraq 1993 or in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, see UNSC, UN Doc. S/PV.3245(1998) and UN Doc. S/1998/794.

147 Lobel, J., ‘The Use of Force to Respond to Terrorist Attacks’, (1999) 24 Yale Journal of International Law 537 Google Scholar, 540.

148 Heller, K. J., ‘Specially Affected States and the Formation of Custom’, (2018) 112 American Journal of International Law 191 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 207.

149 Panke, D., ‘Speech Is Silver, Silence Is Golden?’, (2017) 12 Review of International Organizations 121 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ahmed, supra note 40; Brunnée and Toope, supra note 106, at 74.

150 Kelly, J. P., ‘The Twilight of Customary International Law’, (2000) 40 Virginia Journal of International Law 449 Google Scholar, 474.

151 Ibid.; Olivier Corten similarly points to the legal debates on the invasion of Yugoslavia in which practices by NATO states were emphasized while ‘the reticence and protest of other [non-NATO] states (such as members of the non-aligned movement), on the other hand, were minimized; ignored, even’, in Corten, supra note 10, at 811.

152 Peshawar High Court, Judgment of 11 April 2013, Writ Petition No. 1551-P/2012.

153 European Parliament, Resolution 2014/2567 (RSP), supra note 2.

154 Plaw and and Reis, supra note 8, at 243.

155 Chimni, supra note 144, at 19; see also Stern, supra note 144; Bradley and Gulati, supra note 11.

156 Schweiger, supra note 132.