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18 Oct, 2013

UN rapporteur Christof Heyns condemns use of drone strikes – theguardian.com

Deploying drone strikes as a form of global policing undermines international security and will encourage more states and terrorist groups to acquire unmanned weapons, a UN report has warned.

The study has been submitted to UN general assembly by Christof Heyns, a South African law professor who is the organisation’s special rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Although no state is identified in the report, the comments are clearly directed at the legal problems raised by the US programme of aerial attacks against al-Qaida supporters in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere.

“The expansive use of armed drones by the first states to acquire them, if not challenged, can do structural damage to the cornerstones of international security and set precedents that undermine the protection of life across the globe in the longer term,” the report states.

Read the rest: UN rapporteur Christof Heyns condemns use of drone strikes | World news | theguardian.com.