Intl Law lecturer urges regional unity amid US military actions

In­ter­na­tion­al law lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Dr Safiya Ali, says while small­er Caribbean states may feel tempt­ed to align with pow­er­ful ac­tors such as the Unit­ed States, re­cent US mil­i­tary ac­tions in the re­gion un­der­score the need for stronger re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty ground­ed in in­ter­na­tion­al law and na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty.

“The in­ter­ests of our small states are nev­er go­ing to be at the fore­front of those de­ci­sion-mak­ers, which is why we need to have strong po­si­tions and strate­gies that have our in­ter­ests at the cen­tre and our lim­it­ed re­sources and ca­pac­i­ties in mind,” she said.

Ali said the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s claim re­lies on one in­ter­pre­ta­tion that re­cent strikes did not breach in­ter­na­tion­al law, but in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies such as the Unit­ed Na­tions have tak­en a dif­fer­ent po­si­tion.

“In my view, we do not have spe­cif­ic enough in­for­ma­tion about the lo­ca­tion of the strikes, the pro­ce­dure fol­lowed be­fore the strikes or the na­ture of the per­sons in­jured or killed,” she said.

From Sep­tem­ber to the present, the US mil­i­tary has killed at least 115 peo­ple in more than 35 boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea and the East­ern Pa­cif­ic Ocean. These op­er­a­tions pre­ced­ed US mil­i­tary ac­tion in Venezuela that re­sult­ed in the ouster of Nico­las Maduro on Jan­u­ary 2.

Ali told Guardian Me­dia that cus­tom­ary in­ter­na­tion­al law and the Unit­ed Na­tions Char­ter pro­hib­it the use of force un­less it is car­ried out in self-de­fence or as part of col­lec­tive mea­sures.

She ex­plained that self-de­fence re­quires a threat or an ac­tu­al at­tack that jeop­ar­dis­es the se­cu­ri­ty of the re­spond­ing state, de­mands im­me­di­ate ac­tion, and in­volves force pro­por­tion­ate to the threat or at­tack.

“Al­leged drug traf­fick­ing does not seem to present this kind of threat ne­ces­si­tat­ing the kinds of strikes an­nounced by the US,” she said.

Ali said where a threat ex­ists but the con­di­tions for self-de­fence are not sat­is­fied, the use of force is on­ly law­ful as a col­lec­tive mea­sure with the ap­proval of the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

While the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is not re­quired to dis­close the source of his le­gal ad­vice, Ali said iden­ti­fy­ing who pro­vid­ed the ad­vice and their cre­den­tials would strength­en pub­lic con­fi­dence in its qual­i­ty.

“And while the AG is not ob­lig­at­ed to re­veal who he got his ad­vice from, iden­ti­fy­ing the source and cre­den­tials of the ad­vice would al­low for greater faith in the qual­i­ty of the ad­vice,” she said.

In­ter­na­tion­al law ex­perts have ques­tioned At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie’s claim that re­cent US strikes on al­leged drug traf­fick­ers in the Caribbean were law­ful. Crit­ics say counter-nar­cotics op­er­a­tions are gov­erned by crim­i­nal law, not the law of armed con­flict, and warn lethal force with­out flag-state con­sent or over­sight vi­o­lates in­ter­na­tion­al law and hu­man rights.