November 3rd this year will mark 20 years since a remotely-controlled drone was first used to carry out an extra-judicial killing ‘beyond the battlefield’. While drones had previously been used in warzones, this was the first time a drone had been used to hunt down and kill specific individuals in a country in which the US was not at war.
Since then, an untold number of such operations have taken place across the globe with a significant number of such strikes also causing serious civilian casualties. Despite huge controversy the United States continues to engage in such killings (even while arguing publicly such actions are ‘limited‘) and the practise has now spread amongst other drone operators including the UK, France and Turkey.
In this important online webinar, Drone Wars has invited a number of experts to mark 20 years of drone targeted killings, to offer some reflections on the human, legal and political cost of the practice and to discuss how we can press the international community to ensure that drone operators abide by international law in this area.
Register here.
Speakers:
Agnes Callamard, Secretary General, Amnesty International. Ex Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions (2016-2021)
Chris Woods, Founder of Airwars, author of ‘Sudden Justice: America’s Secret Drone Wars’
Bonyan Jamal, Yemen-based lawyer and Legal Support Director with Mwatana for Human Rights, Yemen
Kamaran Osman, Human Rights Observer for Community Peacemaker Teams in Iraq Kurdistan
Chair: Chris Cole, Director, Drone Wars UK