Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Australian scholar Philip Alston.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
Philip Geoffrey Alston is an Australian international law scholar and human rights practitioner. He is John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, and co-chair of the law school's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. In human rights law, Alston has held a range of senior UN appointments for over two decades, including United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, a position he held from August 2004 to July 2010. In 2014 he was appointed to an unpaid role as UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.
Because operators are based thousands of miles away from the battlefield, and undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audio feed, there is a risk of developing a 'PlayStation' mentality to killing.
This strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability is not an entitlement which the United States or other states can have without doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions.
The problem with the United States is that it is making an increased use of drones/Predators [which are] particularly prominently used now in relation to Pakistan and Afghanistan...My concern is that drones/Predators are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law.