A UN human rights expert on Friday welcomed what he called was a groundbreaking speech by President Barack Obama in which the US leader laid out principles governing the use of counter-terrorism measures such as targeted killings.
President Obama had said on Thursday that, as part of a realignment of US counter-terrorism policy, he would curtail the use of drones, recommit to closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and seek new limits on his own war power.
The new policy guidance imposed tougher standards for when drone strikes could be authorised, limiting them to targets that posed “a continuing, imminent threat to Americans” and could not feasibly be captured.
“This extremely important speech breaks new ground in a number of key respects,” UN expert on human rights and counter-terrorism Ben Emmerson said in a press statement.
“It affirms for the first time this administration’s commitment to seek an end to its armed conflict with al Qaeda as soon as possible; it reminds the world that not every terrorist threat or terrorist attack can be equated with a situation of continuing armed conflict and it sets out more clearly and more authoritatively than ever before the administration’s legal justifications for targeted killing and the constraints that it operates under,” he said.
The speech also clarified and proposed improvements to the procedures for independent oversight and it set out the steps the president had now resolved to take in order to close Guantanamo Bay, he added. Emmerson said that the publication of the procedural guidelines for the use of force in counter-terrorism operations was “a significant step towards increased transparency and accountability. It also disposes of a number of myths, including the suggestion that the US is entitled to regard all military-aged males as combatants, and therefore as legitimate targets.”
He added that he would be engaging with senior US officials in Washington over the coming days and weeks in an effort “to put some flesh on the bones of the announcements made.” The expert said that Obama’s acknowledgement that the time had come to tackle not only the manifestations of terrorism but also its social, economic and political causes around the world signalled a shift in rhetoric and a move in policy emphasis towards promoting a strategy of sustainable and ethical counter-terrorism.
