“…users of targeted killing technology should be required to subject themselves, in the case of each and every death, to impartial investigation. If they do not establish a mechanism to do so, it will be my recommendation that the UN should put the mechanisms in place through the Human Rights Council, the General Assembly and the Office of the High Commissioner.…..The Obama administration continues formally to adopt the position that it will neither confirm nor deny the existence of the drone program, whilst allowing senior officials to give public justifications of its supposed legality in personal lectures and interviews. In reality the administration is holding its finger in the dam of public accountability. There are now a large number of law suits, in different parts of the world, including in the U.K., Pakistan and in the U.S. itself, through which pressure for investigation and accountability is building.”-Ben Emmerson, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism

In the past week more than 27 people were killed by U.S. UAV strikes, in Pakistan.  The victims included women and children.

Also in the past week, at least eight civilians were killed, and 30 wounded, by U.S. drone strikes in Somalia.  At least three people were killed by U.S. drone strike in Yemen.

On 15 August 2012, Pakistan’s Senate Committee on Defence and Defence Production released their own study on just who the victims of drone strikes are. They concluded that increasingly the victims are not combatants!