said the US should \u201cact in a manner consistent with its provisions\u201d, external<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cForce can be used to stop a boat but generally this should be non-lethal measures,\u201d said Luke Moffett of Queens University Belfast, and the use of aggressive tactics must be \u201creasonable and necessary in self-defence\u201d.<\/p>\n
H<\/b>uman rights law<\/b><\/p>\n
Prof Moffett also says the use of force could amount to an \u201cextrajudicial arbitrary killing\u201d and \u201ca fundamental violation of human rights\u201d. <\/p>\n
Under Article 2(4) of the UN charter, countries can resort to force when under attack and are exercising their military in self-defence. <\/p>\n
But Prof Michael Becker of Trinity College Dublin told BBC Verify the US operation \u201cstretches the meaning of the term beyond its breaking point\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that US officials describe the individuals killed by the US strike as narco-terrorists does not transform them into lawful military targets,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
US constitutional law<\/b><\/p>\n
As well as international law, US domestic law has a role to play here. The US constitution says that only Congress has the power to declare war. <\/p>\n
However, Article II of the US constitution says “the president shall be Commander in Chief of the Army” and some constitutional experts have suggested that this grants the president the power to authorise strikes against military targets.<\/p>\n
But it is unclear whether that provision extends to the use of force against non-state actors such as drug cartels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Experts tell BBC Verify US \u2018drug boat\u2019 strike may have broken international lawpublished at 14:10 British Summer Time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-394678","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115140699853926432","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Matt Murphy<\/strong>![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/7c19227a-82fd-4f6f-8244-6f6a8ac62ae0.png.webp.webp\")
<\/p>\n