The world is facing the collapse of the 1948 international order established in the wake of World War II, amid the brutal wars in Gaza and Ukraine, while authoritarian policies continue to spread, Amnesty International has warned. The report accused the world's most powerful governments, including China, Russia and the United States, of leading the global disregard for international rules and values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of December 1948. The war in Gaza, which began on October 7, was a "descent into hell", Secretary-General Agnes Callamard wrote in her preface to the report, where "the'never again' moral and legal lessons [of 1948] were torn into a million pieces". Noting that Hamas had committed "horrific crimes" in its assault on communities in southern Israel on October 7, Callamard said Israel's "campaign of retaliation" had become a "campaign of collective punishment". Amnesty said while Israel continued to disregard international human rights law, the US, its foremost ally, and other countries including the United Kingdom and Germany were guilty of "grotesque double standards" given their willingness to back Israeli and US authorities over Gaza while condemning war crimes by Russia in Ukraine.

The United Nations's special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary killings presented a new report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Agnes Callamard's investigation focused on the legality of armed drones including one that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani near Baghdad's airport on January 3. It concluded the United States acted unlawfully in carrying out the attack. The US, meanwhile, denounced her findings. Callamard spoke to Al Jazeera about her probe and the future of drone warfare.

In a move that caused a ripple effect across the Middle East, Iranian General Qassem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad's international airport on January 3. On that day, the Pentagon announced the attack was carried out "at the direction of the president". In a new report examining the legality of armed drones and the Soleimani killing in particular, Agnes Callamard, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial and arbitrary killings, said the US raid that killed Soleimani was "unlawful". Callamard presented her report at the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday. The United States, which is not a member after quitting the council in 2018, rejected the report saying it gave "a pass to terrorists". In Callamard's view, the consequences of targeted killings by armed drones have been neglected by states.

The United States lashed out on Wednesday at a United Nations probe into the American drone attack that killed a top Iranian general, saying it gave "a pass to terrorists". US President Donald Trump ordered the killing of Iran's General Qassem Soleimani in a January attack near Baghdad's international airport. The incident stoked fears of an all-out conflict between Iran and the US. The US air raid that killed Soleimani and others in his convoy was "unlawful" and an "arbitrary killing" that violated the UN charter, the UN expert on extrajudicial killings, Agnes Callamard, concluded in a report on Tuesday. She said the US provided no evidence "an imminent attack" against American interests was being planned and, therefore, its "self-defence" justification did not apply.

The US drone strike that killed Iran's top general Qassem Soleimani was "unlawful", the United Nations expert on extrajudicial killings concluded in a report on Tuesday. US President Donald Trump ordered the killing in a January 3 drone strike near Baghdad international airport. Soleimani was "the world's top terrorist" and "should have been terminated long ago", Trump said at the time. Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was also killed in the attack. Callamard concluded that it was an "arbitrary killing" that violated the UN charter.

After a U.S. airstrike kills Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Iraq, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tells'Fox & amp; Friends' that President Trump's decision was necessary to deter further aggression. The U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial killing on Friday said the President Trump-approved drone strike against Qassem Soleimani, Iran's top general, violated international human rights law. In a lengthy Twitter thread, Agnès Callamard said that "outside the context of active hostilities, the use of drones or other means for targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal," adding that the U.S. would need to prove the person targeted constituted an imminent threat to others. She also took issue with the justification for using drones in another country on the basis of self-defense. "Under customary international law States can take military action if the threatened attack is imminent, no other means would deflect it, and the action is proportionate," she wrote.