Washington DC - The US military's attacks on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific could potentially amount to crimes against humanity, a UN human rights expert has said.

President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's use of airstrikes to destroy boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific is likely to have violated international law, UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Ben Saul declared in a recent briefing.

Since the beginning of operation "Southern Spear" in September 2025, Saul has examined 68 attacks on suspected boats, which have collectively left at least 223 people dead.

According to Saul, who also serves as a professor of international law at the University of Sydney, while there is limited evidence that all the boats attacked were linked to drug trafficking, the US' actions constitute crimes against humanity either way.

China Xi to make big move in bid to pressure Trump into halting arms sales to Taiwan

If the crews of the boats were criminals attempting to transport narcotics into the US, their actions did not constitute a military attack and as a result, the US has no legal justification for killing them, the professor argued.

Additionally, the airstrikes could not be considered necessary or proportionate as it was possible to intercept the boats.

"The use of potentially lethal force is permitted only where it is strictly necessary and proportionate in personal self-defence or defence of others against an imminent threat of death or serious injury," Saul argued.

"It must be strictly necessary in view of the threat posed by the attacker; it must be a last resort after other alternatives have been exhausted or deemed inadequate; the force applied cannot exceed the amount strictly needed for responding to the threat."

"There are reasonable grounds to believe that the reported 68 attacks that killed 223 people constituted crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law," he concluded.