This week, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Volker Turk, declared that the U.S. military has violated international law by killing at least 61 civilians thus far on 14 different boats in international waters in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. The boats targeted by President Donald Trump are purportedly suspected of drug-running, with Trump claiming the U.S. is in a “war” against what he has characterized as narco-terrorists. But the U.N. rejected the claim that drug smuggling constitutes an armed attack against the United States, insisting instead that criminal suspects must be arrested and tried, not summarily executed, and that even in wartime, civilians cannot be targeted.
Turk joins a chorus of voices that have expressed grave concerns about the Trump administration’s boat strikes. Human Rights Watch has condemned them as a form of “extrajudicial execution.” Amnesty International calls them “murder.” International legal scholars generally concur that the strikes are an unprecedented and unwarranted use of force. The former head of Southern Command resigned amid concerns about the legality of the strikes, and numerous uniformed lawyers within the U.S. military itself have told the media that they believe the strikes violate the law of armed conflict. According to a YouGov poll last Friday, a majority of Americans also oppose the strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean.
In addition to being widely viewed as illegal, whether under the law of war, the law of peace or the law of the sea, the campaign of violence against civilian boats in the Caribbean makes little sense in terms of U.S. security goals. U.S. intelligence agencies have refuted the view that Venezuela and Colombia—off whose coasts the boats have most frequently been targeted—are a significant source of fentanyl entering the U.S., which Trump has insisted is the reason for the strikes. To the contrary, most fentanyl originates in Mexico and arrives by land. The attacks are also terrorizing civilian fishing communities in the region. Still, the Trump administration defends its actions as being consistent with Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which allows the use of force in “self-defense” against an “armed attack.”
