CRINMAIL 168:
Drones: No safe place for children
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Drones: No safe place for children
Since 2004, the US has launched 415 strikes by unmanned aircrafts, or ‘drones’ in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia—killing more than 3,000 people. Beyond these direct casualties, the US drone program is terrorising entire civilian populations, nearly half of which are children.
This special CRINMAIL edition was written by Katie Taylor from Reprieve, a human rights organisation that promotes the rule of law around the world, and strives to secure each person’s right to a fair trial. Ms Taylor gives us an insight into how the US drone programme affects children's lives and how their use against children amount to grave violations of their rights. You can read a longer version of this piece on our website here.
Children have become "bug splats"
Drones are unmanned aircraft that can be used for surveillance or to launch missiles. The US first used armed drones in Afghanistan in 2001, and has since expanded its drone use to countries with which the US has not declared war. The Bush administration carried out at least 45 drone strikes in Pakistan under the so-called ‘war on terror’. Since then, the Obama administration has expanded this practice, carrying out more than five times as many strikes in Pakistan alone.
Unmanned aircraft, or ‘drones’ hover over communities 24 hours a day, creating a constant, physical reminder that anyone could be killed at any moment - some strikes have killed children while they were in their bedrooms or classrooms.
Yet the US drone programme is operated in complete secrecy and there seems to be a complete lack of political will to investigate child casualties.
Not only are children killed for the alleged crimes of their family members or neighbours, but - to use the military slang of drone pilots - hundreds of children have become ‘bug splats’, killed by drones whether specifically targeted or not.
Nobody knows who is being targeted, so nobody knows how to make themselves safe. As a result, parents are afraid to send their children to school, teachers are afraid to teach and people are afraid to leave their homes. Even trips to the market to buy food can be dangerous - you never know what the drone’s next target is. All of this causes the local community and economy to grind to a halt.
Drones and international law
The rise in the use of drone technology represents a real challenge to the framework of established international law. According to the UN Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights, Ben Emmerson, “the reality here is that the world is facing a new technological development which is not easily accommodated within the existing legal frameworks, and none of the analyses that have been floated are entirely satisfactory or comprehensive.”
Grave violations of children’s rights
The US drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia have targeted homes and community gatherings, leaving no safe space for children to escape the possibility of being injured or killed.
According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, at least 204 children have been killed by strikes between 2004 and January 2013.
Evidence gathered show that the strikes have directly targeted schools and in some instances failed to ensure that they were adequately avoiding schools. In 2006 for example, US drones struck a religious school in Pakistan killing 69 children.
Furthermore, the US has been known to use a method of so-called ‘double taps’ or ‘rescue strikes’ - striking the same location more than once in succession. This has meant that humanitarian actors attempting to rescue those injured by drone strikes were themselves hit. As a consequence, they now have to wait, sometimes up to six hours, before going in to rescue the victims.
Killing and maiming children, attacking schools and the denial of humanitarian access are three of the six grave categories of violations of children's rights in an armed conflict situation, as defined by the UN Security Council, which serve as a basis to gather evidence on violations of children's rights.Read more.
Violations of children's rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
Beyond the threat of death or injury, which violates children’s inherent right to life (Article 6 of the CRC), the drone programme violates children's rights to an adequate standard of living (Article 27). A large percentage of drone strikes have targeted homes, displacing families and sometimes forcing children to work.
Inevitably, drone strikes violate children's right to physical and mental health (Article 24).
As well as the direct injuring and maiming of children, the US drone programme has targeted health facilities. For example, in September 2011, a hospital in Abyan, in south Yemen, was destroyed by a drone strike. It was the only functioning hospital in the region, forcing residents to either seek medical aid at the post office, where provisional services had been set up, or travel long journeys to hospitals in other cities.
As mentioned earlier, the practice of the so-called ‘double taps’ compromises children’s access to emergency services, violating their right to health. Furthermore, the constant presence of drones overhead has a profound and possibly irreversible psychological effect on children. Entire communities live with the constant physical reminder that their death and that of their family members could come at any moment. Moreover, areas where drone strikes occur are unlikely to have any provision for psychological care.
Targeting schools is a clear violation of children's right to education (Article 28). It has been documented that parents are pulling their children from school because they fear the school will be struck or their children targeted on their way to school.
Justice for victims of drone strikes
Drone strikes against civilians are clearly unlawful and constitute violations of the fundamental human right to not be arbitrarily deprived of life. The US drone programme targets civilians, including children, violating children’s rights as outlined in the CRC and other human rights instruments.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights recently launched an inquiry into the civilian impact, and human rights implications of the use of drones and other forms of targeted killing for the purpose of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency.
According to the Special Rapporteur, States are under an international law obligation to establish effective independent and impartial investigations into any drone strike in which it is plausibly alleged that civilian casualties were sustained.
After a visit to Pakistan this month, he concluded that the Government of Pakistan “does not consent to the use of drones by the United States on its territory and it considers this to be a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and territorial integrity.”Read more.
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More on arms this month:
Time to regulate arms trade!
The final UN Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) opened in New York on Monday 18 March.
The negotiations will be held until 28 March and are an opportunity for states to agree rules to end irresponsible arms transfers across borders that fuel grave abuses of human rights.
This is a critical test for States to demonstrate their commitment to human rights and humanitarian law.
The nine-day ATT conference at the UN follows on from last July when UN negotiations ended without an agreement due to delaying tactics by a handful of States opposed to its goals. In particular, the US was reluctant to do a deal before the presidential elections. Read more.
During the opening day, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the participants to conclude the conference on a comprehensive instrument that would establish standards for international trade in conventional weapons. Mr Ban said that an effective and strong ATT will put warlords, pirates, human rights abusers, organised criminals, terrorists and gun runners on notice, and require exporting countries to assess whether weapons will be used to commit grave violations of international humanitarian law or even fuel conflict.
Armed violence, he noted, kills more than half a million people each year, including 66,000 women and girls. Read more.
Explosive weapons: A threat to children
Tens of thousands of civilians are killed and injured every year by explosive weapons in populated areas, and children are disproportionately affected.
This was the topic of a panel discussion organised by the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (SRSG) in collaboration with UNICEF, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the mission of Norway to promote a better understanding of, and response to how civilians are affected by explosive weapons.
During the discussions, civilian and military protection experts shared their experience of addressing the issue and put forward policy recommendations to reduce and prevent human suffering caused by explosive weapons.
State and non-State actors should refrain from the use of explosive weapons that have wide-area effects in populated areas and ensure that operations are conducted in compliance with international humanitarian law principles of proportionality, distinction and precaution. Read more.
News and Updates:
International justice: the surprising surrender of warlord Bosco Ntaganda
Bosco Ntaganda, the fugitive Congolese warlord responsible for grave children's rights violations surrendered on 18 March at the US Embassy in Kigali, Rwanda, and requested his immediate transfer to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face war crimes charges.
Seven years after a warrant was issued for his arrest by the ICC, the military commander known as ‘The Terminator’ became the first indictee to surrender himself to the court.
Ntaganda faces charges of grave violations committed against children, including the conscription of child soldiers, acts of murder, sexual slavery and rape during the 2002-2003 conflict in the Ituri district of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In a statement made this week, Ms. Leila Zerrougui, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (SRSG), says that, as part of the M23 rebel movement, he also recruited and used children as bodyguards, porters and for other purposes in last year’s North Kivu rebellion. These grave violations committed against children resulted in Security Council sanctions against him, including a travel ban and an asset freeze. Read more.
Read CRIN’s background on the armed conflict in the DRC.
Two years of violence in Syria
The violence in Syria which began in March 2011 as a protest movement similar to those across the Middle East and North Africa, has claimed over 60,000 lives, mostly civilians, and displaced more than 2.7 million persons.
Syria’s uprising turned increasingly bloody in 2012 as the government’s crackdown on anti-government protests developed into an entrenched armed conflict. Government forces and pro-government militia known as shabeeha continue to torture detainees and commit extrajudicial killings in areas under their control. Some opposition forces have also carried out serious abuses like kidnapping, torture, and extrajudicial executions. Read more.
In a new report, Childhood Under Fire, launched to mark two years of violence in Syria, Save the Children details the impact of the conflict on children, showing that many are struggling to find enough to eat; are living in barns, parks and caves; are unable to go to school with teachers having fled and schools being attacked; and that damage to sanitation systems is forcing some children to defecate in the street. Download the report.
Girl soldiers face battles in civilian life
Programmes for the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) of former child soldiers are largely failing to meet the needs of girl soldiers, concludes a new analysis by the humanitarian news agency, IRIN.
While girls are often thought to be used only as sex slaves within armed groups, in reality they serve an array of highly valued roles, including acting as combatants, spies, domestics and porters.
But because of a lack of awareness of this, DDR programmes are ill-equipped to address the needs of former girl soldiers, who might be considered as equal to male combatants within the groups, face gender discrimination and stereotypes upon their return to society, which can eventually result in exclusion and poverty.
Notably, while girls represent 40 per cent of child soldiers around the world, they make up only five per cent of child soldiers enrolled in DDR programmes. Full story.
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