UN Report Flags US Boat Strikes as Potential Crimes Against Humanity

A United Nations report has found that US military strikes on suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific are unlawful and may amount to “crimes against humanity”.

The report, authored by UN Special Rapporteur Ben Saul and released on Monday, examined 68 attacks carried out between September of the previous year and August, concluding that they killed at least 223 people and involved the “illegal use” of disproportionate force.

The findings came just days after the US military announced another strike on a vessel, which left four people dead. The administration of President Donald Trump, which characterizes the boat operations as part of an armed military conflict, has defended them as essential to stopping the flow of lethal drugs into the United States. It has described the drug shipments as an “armed attack” on US soil.

Here is a closer look at why the US has targeted these vessels and whether the strikes hold up under international law:

What Does the UN Report Say?

The report determined that the strikes by US forces cannot be justified under either national or international law and therefore represent “serial extrajudicial killings in violation of the right to life”.

They “plausibly constitute crimes against humanity”, the report stated.

Even if the individuals on the attacked vessels were members of organised criminal or “terrorist” groups, as the US has asserted, the report found no evidence that they had launched an armed attack against the United States or were being used as proxies by foreign governments — circumstances that would legally warrant a military response.

Saul, the UN special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, emphasised that drug trafficking “is not equivalent to a military attack”.

Observers have also noted that the Trump administration has never produced evidence linking any of the struck vessels to drug trafficking.

The UN report further questioned the legality of the US abduction of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, during which 75 people were killed, as well as collaborations with other Latin American countries under the Trump administration’s “Shield of the Americas” initiative, which aims to extend US antidrug operations onto land across the region.

The UN report called for internal investigations and for commanders involved in the operations to face accountability.

It concluded that the strikes had failed to prevent cocaine shipments arriving in the US on container ships, which remain inadequately inspected.

Why Has the US Launched Strikes on Boats?

Washington began striking vessels it claimed were transporting drugs from Venezuela to the US across the Eastern Pacific and Caribbean in September of the previous year.

The US military has regularly posted videos on social media depicting the moments the vessels are hit but has revealed little about those killed and has not furnished evidence connecting them to drug trafficking.

Furthermore, experts note that most drugs enter the US via Mexico overland through the southern border and do not originate in Venezuela. Families of those killed have frequently said their loved ones were fishermen, not drug smugglers.

The UN report catalogued 223 casualties from 68 strikes carried out through August.

Two additional attacks this month have raised the death toll to 234 across 70 strikes.

In the first round of attacks on September 2, 2025, the US military allegedly employed a “double tap” tactic, launching a second strike against survivors of an initial attack that had killed 11 people.

This drew sharp criticism from the US Congress, which called on the Pentagon to release full footage of the strikes.

There were also allegations that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had ordered the military to “kill them all” in the double-tap operation. However, senior military commanders later testified before Congress that he had not.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Michael Vigil, former chief of international operations at the US Drug Enforcement Administration, said: “That is murder. No matter how you spell it out, it’s murder, … and it shocks the moral conscience.”

How Does the US Justify the Strikes?

The most recent attack, carried out on Saturday, killed four people, according to the US military. It asserted that the boat was travelling “along established narco-trafficking routes” and that “confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking”.

Trump has declared that the US is in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and has repeatedly justified the boat attacks as necessary to curb the flow of drugs into the country.

Senior officials have also claimed the US is adhering to due process. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a July Senate hearing that “every strike has a legal officer on the deck that has to make a determination about whether the call is legal or not”.

Rights organisations, however, have challenged the killings. In January, the families of two Trinidadian men — Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41 — filed the first legal case against the US government over the boat attacks in a federal court in Massachusetts. The lawsuit, supported by US legal groups, argued that the victims were fishermen.

Separately in December, the family of Colombian national Alejandro Carranza Medina lodged a human rights complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which operates under the Organization of American States.

Can Any Action Be Taken Against US Officials?

The designation “crimes against humanity” implies that killings have been carried out systematically as part of a plan by a state or organised group and represent an especially grave offence.

Those accused of such crimes can only be tried and convicted before the International Criminal Court (ICC), which assesses whether perpetrators were aware that their actions targeted a civilian population and whether their conduct resulted in multiple deaths.

US courts cannot adjudicate such cases, as no specific federal laws criminalise crimes against humanity.

The US is not a member of the ICC, and no American has ever been tried before the court in The Hague.

The Trump administration has been hostile to the ICC following arrest warrants issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The US has accused the court of targeting officials from countries that are not ICC members.

Washington has sanctioned more than a dozen ICC judges and prosecutors since February of the previous year and is reportedly preparing additional sanctions against the court itself.

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