A/HRC/44/38 humanitarian law is thus based on the existence of an international or non-international armed conflict. To be lawful under humanitarian law, targeted killings must be limited to combatants and guided by military necessity and proportionality, which requires avoidance of excessive civilian harm. (c) The third legal regime applicable to targeted killings by drones is international human rights law. Under Art. 6 ICCPR, States are prohibited from arbitrary deprivations of life. The prohibition is a jus cogens norm, recognized under customary international law, 16 and its respect is applicable extra-territorially (GC36, para. 63). As is well recognized, international human rights law continues to apply in armed conflict situations. 11. For the drone strike and targeted killing of General Soleimani and his companions to be lawful under international law, it must satisfy the legal requirements under all the applicable international legal regimes. Some drone strikes, but not all, raise difficulties as to their legal assessment, given that IHL and IHRL can sometimes provide diverging answers to the crucial question of when it is legally permissible to kill another person. The strike against General Soleimani is one such situation, raising genuine uncertainty as to how to interpret its lawfulness. III. Context and Implications: An international armed conflict? 12. General Soleimani, his companions in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and those of Iraq’s PMF 17 all had a military status, according to the information publicly available. Had the strike occurred within the setting of an armed conflict, under international humanitarian law they could have constituted legitimate military targets as combatants. IHL does not prohibit the killing of belligerents, but it does prohibit killings of civilians and persons hors de combat, as well as indiscriminate attacks and those resulting in an excessive loss of civilians.18 Whether and how this legal regime applies to all those killed, i.e. not only to General Soleimani19 but also to all his Iraqi and Iranian companions20, is thus crucial to the determination of the lawfulness of the strike. 13. International humanitarian law (IHL) applies solely during international armed conflicts (IAC) and non-international armed conflicts (NIAC). Both will be examined in turn. 16 17 18 19 20 A/HRC/35/23, para. 26. PMF is technically an ally of the US in the fight against ISIL, but it is also an entity allegedly responsible for some of the attacks against the US in Iraq. In December 2019, the US apparently called on the Government of Iraq to take actions to control this militia, now part of State forces. But the PMF is not mentioned in US explanations for the strike against General Soleimani. It is not clear how to categorize them and the implications of their presence in the car. According to the ICRC, the “law relating to the conduct of hostilities is primarily a law of prohibition: it does not authorize, but prohibits certain things.” In other words, when “we say that IHL ‘permits’ certain conduct, we mean only that IHL does not prohibit that conduct. We do not mean that IHL authorizes or justifies that conduct, or provides a legal right to engage in that conduct that might override other legal constraints.” https://www.justsecurity.org/34815/human-rights-armed-conflictpart-ii/. General Soleimani had been appointed head of Iran’s Quds Force in March 1998 and is credited to have transformed it into an elite force with operations said to extend across Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic and Yemen. The Quds Force is said to have worked closely with the Popular Mobilization Forces of Iraq in the fight against ISIL and allegedly provided close support to the Government and forces of the Syrian Arab Republic throughout the past years’ conflict. For many human rights activists from Iran, Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic General Soleimani was deemed responsible for organising, supporting, inciting official and non-official forces involved in human rights violations. Mr. al-Mohandes was a commander of the Popular Mobilization Force, and four others killed were members of that force. The PMF is the State umbrella of Iraqi militias. Thus, the US military strike killed members of Iraqi state forces as well. The implications of these killings are addressed in Section V below. 25