UN Warns That Unmanned Drones May Violate International Law

October 29th, 2009 :: 1 Comment

First generation military robots are already in trouble.

Early generation military robots are already in trouble.

The first blow to robotic military systems has come at the hands of the UN. UN human rights investigator Philip Alston wants the US to explain how they decide who and what to attack with their unmanned drones. The concern is that these drone attacks lead to arbitrary executions, which are banned under international law. Drone attacks have so far been highly successful in remotely attacking targets that cannot be reached with traditional military systems, but they have also been criticized due to loss of innocent lives in their attacks and the possible violation of other nation’s sovereignty when used. The drone attacks have not stopped though, mainly due to their undisputed effectiveness. Despite that fact, is this a sign that attacks by military robots are viewed differently than attacks by human soldiers? And if so, what effect will this have towards the future of robotic warfare?

In speaking to the BBC, Mr. Alston said:

“My concern is that these drones, these Predators, are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law. The onus is really on the government of the United States to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary executions, extrajudicial executions, are not in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons.”

With so many military targets residing in areas that are not easily reachable by the conventional military, or in areas that would result in high loss of human life, unmanned drones are being used more frequently each day. The question that the UN, and more specifically Mr. Alston, brings up is whether the ease of attacks using robotic drones is leading to attacks that are based on unsupported evidence. Since no loss of human life for the attackers is on the line, are drone attacks authorized without direct confirmation of the evidence they are based on?

With the Taliban now being payed to switch sides, who knows if information they give is a fact or just an opportunity for them to use the US military for their own personal gains. If the US is told that a known militant leader is at a specific location, the logistics involved to confirm the information is so complicated that by the time the information is confirmed, the militant could be gone. With drones constantly circling overhead, the location is easily transferred and the attack can happen in a much shorter time frame.

The difficulty in confirming a death from a drone attack is an example of how challenging it is to know if the evidence for the attack was good or not. In August, Baitullah Mehsud, a top militant commander in Pakistan, was reported dead from a Predator drone attack, but multiple reports said he was still alive. A debate raged for weeks on his death, or lack thereof, until a final confirmation of his death was given a few weeks after the attack (read about it here).

Had Baitullah Mehsud been killed as a direct result of engaging with US ground forces, the confirmation of his death would have been much less burdensome and could not have been as easily denied by his followers. These kinds of questions are what is leading Mr. Alston to question the arbitrary judgment of drone attacks. The attack was carried out by a drone because a ground assault would have probably ended with a large loss of life, and it would have taken so long that Mehsud would have been able to escape. If the information leading to the drone attack had been later found to be false, then anyone that had been killed could be seen as a murdered innocent instead of an unintended casualty of war.

The difference between the acceptance of how someone is killed is vast. If I remember correctly, the 1991 Gulf War was essentially ended after the US killed 100+ civilians at a site they thought housed a meeting of Iraqi military leaders. The negative press from that attack led the US to stop directly going after Saddam Hussein and changed the course of the conflict. Attacks similar to this example are a violation of international human rights laws, and therein lies the problem with drone attacks. Since drone attacks seem to happen daily at the expense of international sovereignty, who should be held accountable for the resulting deaths, especially if the dead include civilians?

Mr. Alston presented his report to the UN General Assembly’s human rights committee earlier this week, and the committee’s decisions could forever impact the use of robots in war. While the robots in question now are still controlled by humans, robots with artificial intelligence that decide who to kill by themselves present a much larger problem. Their decisions will be entirely arbitrary and will undoubtedly be much more controversial. Should the US have to show exactly how they received their information that lead to drone attacks and who it was from, the resulting accountability could lead to many fewer drone attacks. A robot controlled by artificial intelligence will make its own decisions in war, so can it be held accountable just like a human can?

The case against arbitrary executions has the possibility to change the face of robotic warfare forever. Accountability is a major factor in robotic warfare, and Mr. Alston’s report could be the first step in preventing the use of military robots. At the very least this could how robot warriors are developed, leading to greater transparency and a constant human control factor.

::from BBC::