The second major UN Report on drones this week is now publicly available — by Ben Emmerson, Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counterterrorism. Just Security’s Sarah Knuckey will post a capsule summary later today. In case you missed it, earlier this week the UN publicly released the Drones Report by Christof Heyns, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions (see Sarah Knuckey’s primer on Heyns’ report).
I will soon post a comment on the co-belligerency analysis in Emmerson’s report (paras. 66-67) and in Heyns’ report (paras. 59-63). The question: what legal standard should apply to the US position that it is engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda “and associated forces.” The answer may surprise.