Talking Points

The Core Principle

"If you can see them, and you can spare them, you must spare them."

On Modern Surveillance and Legal Obligation

"The drone operator watches a family on a screen. The targeting cell has days of surveillance data. The collateral damage estimate predicts exactly how many civilians will die. Yet the law permits these deaths as 'unintended.' That word has lost all meaning."

On the Shift from Intent to Avoidability

"The question is not whether the commander 'intended' civilian deaths — that's a semantic puzzle with no clear answer when harm is foreseen with certainty. The question is whether the commander could have avoided them. That's a factual question with a verifiable answer."

On What FHI Does Not Do

"FHI is not pacifism. It doesn't prohibit military operations. It doesn't eliminate proportionality. It requires commanders to answer a question they should already be asking: Is there another way? If the answer is yes, and they strike anyway, they own the consequences."

On Existing Law

"FHI doesn't create new law. Article 57 of Additional Protocol I was deliberately drafted to expand precautionary obligations as technological capability increases. The drafters anticipated this. They built a rule that grows with capability. We simply haven't applied it."

On Enforcement

"Intent is a subjective mental state — difficult to prove, easy to disclaim. Avoidability is an objective condition, grounded in evidence: what alternatives existed, what the commander knew, what choices were made. The records already exist. FHI simply requires that they be preserved and reviewed."

The Mohammad Azam Case

"On 21 May 2016, a drone strike killed Mullah Mansour, leader of the Taliban, along with his taxi driver Mohammad Azam — a father of four with no connection to any militant group. Azam was identifiable as a civilian. His death was foreseeable with certainty. It was avoidable. There was no ticking bomb. Yet existing law permitted his killing as 'not excessive.'"

"Under FHI, the question would be different: Was there a feasible alternative that could have spared him? If yes — and there was — the strike should not have proceeded as planned. FHI does not ask whether Mohammad Azam's death was 'proportionate.' It asks whether it was necessary."

On What Is At Stake

"When law characterises the deaths of innocents as acceptable 'side-effects,' it provides not protection but complicity dressed in legal language. If the law permits the predictable killing of ascertainable civilians merely because such harm was not 'intended,' the law has drifted from its purpose."