- European Union parliament passes resolution declaring drone strikes ‘illegal’, calls for banning them
- Resolution says EU states should not perpetrate or facilitate unlawful drone strikes
Parliamentarians of the European Union on Thursday passed a resolution which termed the use of drone strikes as “illegal” and proposed a ban on it, according to a report by London-based human rights organisation, Reprieve.
The Members of European Parliament (MEPs) voted 534 against 49, suggesting a ban on the use of drones and demanding that “EU countries do not perpetrate unlawful targeted killings or facilitate such killings by other states”.
The resolution further called on them to “oppose and ban practices of extra judicial targeted killings,” adding that drone strikes would be considered a “violation of international law” if a country did not permit them to occur in its territory.
Kat Craig, the Reprieve Legal Director that “this should be a wake-up call to countries like the UK and Germany; they need to clean up their act not only by ensuring that they stop cooperating with extrajudicial killings, but also by pressuring the US for greater transparency and accountability.”
Barbara Lochbihler, of human rights sub-committee said “MEPs have delivered a strong rebuke to the practice of targeted aerial killings outside a declared war zone, as well as the use of armed drones in war situations outside of the international legal framework”.
Last week, the welfare organisation named Reprieve submitted an application in the International Court that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) members were involved in facilitating US drone strikes in Pakistan.
In this application, a Pakistani Karim Khan’s case was highlighted, who had lost a brother and son in the US drone strikes in 2009.
Recently, Khan is to meet with assembly members of Britain, Germany and Holland and discussed the impacts of drone strikes in the Waziristan area.
Khan, on the passing of the resolution in the European parliament said “Today, Europe has taken a first step to bringing a stop to these illegal, unaccountable killings; I hope that national governments will follow suit, so that one day I may finally get justice”.
The US drone strikes targeting various countries based on intelligence reports remain deeply unpopular as according to a survey, in 31 nations, at least half disapprove of the US conducting drone missile strikes targeting extremists in places such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
