With the Stroke of a Pen: Legal Standards for Adding Names to Government Kill Lists
In: International Human Rights Law ReviewSearch for other papers by Alexandre Andrade Sampaio in
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United States (us) government officials disclosed, in 2010, that Anwar Al-Aulaki, a dual us-Yemeni citizen alleged to be a leader of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, had been added to a list of individuals that the Central Intelligence Agency (cia) and the Joint Special Operations Command (jsoc) were authorised to target for death. It is clear that the right to life is affected by targeted killing actions, as the objective of the practice is to kill the targeted individual. For such a practice to be lawful, it has to be considered non-arbitrary according to international standards. The two main instruments of universal scope that provide a legal protection for this right are the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The use of lethal force by a State would be legally justified by: (1) the carrying out of a lawfully imposed death penalty; (2) during an armed conflict, under international humanitarian law; and (3) if the force used was necessary, proportional and not the first option. This article examines the question of whether adding names to kill list remains legal under international human rights and humanitarian law, and if so, under what circumstances?
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61
See ibid, 1039.
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129
See G McNeal, ‘How to Make a Kill-List’, Lawfare (25 February 2013) available at <http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/02/how-to-make-a-kill-list/>; and May, supra n. 49, at 48.
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With the Stroke of a Pen: Legal Standards for Adding Names to Government Kill Lists
In: International Human Rights Law ReviewSearch for other papers by Alexandre Andrade Sampaio in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by Luís Renato Vedovato in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
United States (us) government officials disclosed, in 2010, that Anwar Al-Aulaki, a dual us-Yemeni citizen alleged to be a leader of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, had been added to a list of individuals that the Central Intelligence Agency (cia) and the Joint Special Operations Command (jsoc) were authorised to target for death. It is clear that the right to life is affected by targeted killing actions, as the objective of the practice is to kill the targeted individual. For such a practice to be lawful, it has to be considered non-arbitrary according to international standards. The two main instruments of universal scope that provide a legal protection for this right are the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The use of lethal force by a State would be legally justified by: (1) the carrying out of a lawfully imposed death penalty; (2) during an armed conflict, under international humanitarian law; and (3) if the force used was necessary, proportional and not the first option. This article examines the question of whether adding names to kill list remains legal under international human rights and humanitarian law, and if so, under what circumstances?
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 443 | 52 | 7 |
| Full Text Views | 233 | 2 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 21 | 4 | 3 |
