The United Kingdom, Targeted Killing, International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law

It would appear that, to date, the United Kingdom (UK) has engaged in the targeted killing of suspected terrorists on the territory of a third State on four occasions—most recently in June 2024. In responding to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights 2015 Inquiry into a policy of targeted killing outside of armed conflict, the then Secretary of State for Defence, Michael Fallon, indicated that the appropriate legal framework for such drone strikes was international humanitarian law, and that compliance with international humanitarian law would result in compliance with any obligations that the UK also held in international human rights law. The position has been neither confirmed nor refuted since. This article assesses the accuracy of the statement, and finds that neither element is necessarily true.