General Assembly panel: Use drones under UN charter says envoy

Pakistan calls for international norms to govern UAVs.

UNITED NATIONS:

Pakistan has called for evolving international norms to govern the use of armed drones strictly according to the UN Charter, international human rights and humanitarian laws.

Ambassador Zamir Akram, Pakistani delegate to the General Assembly’s First Committee, which deals with disarmament and international security matters, also brushed aside claims that Islamabad’s opposition to initiating negotiations on a treaty to ban the production of fissile material was solely responsible for the lack of progress on the agenda of the UN Conference on Disarmament.

Akram, who is Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN’s European offices in Geneva, said the ‘cardinal principle’ of equal and undiminished security for all states was being trumped by narrow self-interests.



Voicing concerns he said that using the weapon in the territory of another country outside the conflict zone was against the international law. He added that it was challenge to security and sovereignty of a state, as it involved the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians including women and children.

Pakistan also called for international laws for the usage of Lethal Autonomous Robots (LARs). These LARs would choose and fire on pre-programmed targets on their own without any human intervention and therefore pose a challenge in protecting civilians and fixing responsibility after the attacks.

Pakistan also recognised the need for a new consensus on nuclear disarmament, but Ambassador Akram conceded that consensus-building would be difficult.  An essential prerequisite was the right to equal security for all states.  Until nuclear disarmament was achieved, non-nuclear-weapon states should be offered legally binding security assurances, in the form of a treaty, by nuclear-weapon states. Pakistan, itself a nuclear-weapon state, had repeatedly advocated for such an instrument.

“Absolute security for some states could not come at the cost of diminished security for others”, he said.

He pressed that new weapons, including drones and lethal autonomous robots were being developed, deployed and used which posed threats of weaponisation to the outer space. He added that the hostile use of cyber-technologies for espionage and surveillance was growing.

Elaborating Pakistan’s stand on the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, Ambassador Akram said the CD is not a body to negotiate only one item on its agenda.

Over the past few years, Pakistan has been reluctant to get into negotiations on the proposed US-backed treaty in the Geneva-based CD on the ground that it is prejudicial to its national security interests. The conference has 65 members.

The Pakistani delegate insisted that if there was no consensus on negotiating a so-called FMCT, there was also no consensus on negotiating nuclear disarmament, negative security assurances or a pact to prevent an arms race in outer space.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 19^th, 2013.