Targeted killing outside armed conflict: a new departure for the UK?

Gray, Christine

doi:10.1080/20531702.2016.1244332

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…It would be consistent with UK practice of using drones to kill identified individuals in the ongoing armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Gray 2016: 199)During the JCHR inquiry evidence session, Jennifer Gibson (a lawyer working for the charity Reprieve) argued that there was ahuge inconsistency between what the Prime Minister said on 7 September and his Cabinet then submitted to the UN. He stood up in Parliament and said quite explicitly that this was not about collective self-defence of Iraq, this was not about ISIS, this was about a direct threat to the UK.…”

Section: A ‘New Departure’mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It would be consistent with UK practice of using drones to kill identified individuals in the ongoing armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Gray 2016: 199)…”

Section: A ‘New Departure’mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The different justifications seem to have been given with different audiences in mind (Gray 2016: 199). The collective self-defence argument is not overly new or contentious.…”

Section: A ‘New Departure’mentioning

confidence: 99%

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New technologies and legal justification: The United Kingdom’s use of drones in self-defence

Birdsall

2022

Glob. Con.

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This article examines the United Kingdom’s use of drones in an act of self-defence in a counter-terrorism operation. The government justified the targeted killing of a UK citizen in Syria – a country with which it was not at war at the time – with reference to existing laws and norms. In doing so, it contested a number of established concepts to justify its conduct as lawful activity. The article argues that modern weapons such as drones, which are used to address novel threats, lead to legal justification that in turn has the potential to create new laws. In this way, the intersection of norms, warfare and new technologies becomes a productive site of political contestation. The contribution of the article is twofold: empirically, it contributes to debates on targeted killing and discussions surrounding the meaning and interpretation of ‘imminence’ in the context of preventive self-defence in the United Kingdom; and theoretically, it adds to the constructivist literature by examining norm contestation and resulting normativity in this area. The article concludes that the legal justification in this particular instance has important implications for other emerging technologies that require discussions about how states justify their actions to conform with existing legal and normative frameworks.

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Section: A ‘New Departure’mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It would be consistent with UK practice of using drones to kill identified individuals in the ongoing armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Gray 2016: 199)…”

Section: A ‘New Departure’mentioning

confidence: 99%