Drones and Transnational Armed Conflicts

The rise of transnational armed conflicts (conflicts between states and non-state actors) has raised complicated questions about the scope of such conflicts and the law applicable to them. When does human rights law exclusively govern a situation and at what point does IHL also apply? One important way of answering this question is to examine the rules governing the application of lethal force. Because armed drones employ lethal force without first offering the target the opportunity to surrender, they are exclusively tools of armed conflict. Therefore, the use of drones provides a clear indication that the state employing them believes that the laws of armed conflict apply to the situations in which they are used. After briefly describing two competing views of the scope of armed conflict in transnational armed conflicts, this short essay explains why the core principles of IHL favor basing the scope of transnational armed conflicts upon principles found in the neutrality law of IAC's rather than turning to the factors laid out in the Tadic opinion that govern NIAC's