Book Project
Drones, Peacekeeping, and Civilian Protection in Armed Conflict
My book project, focuses on the deployment of drones for civilian protection in peacekeeping. While emerging technologies like drones have attracted much interest in many fields over the last two decades because of their effectiveness in accomplishing difficult tasks with limited risk, much of the literature on the subject of drones' effectiveness has primarily been studied in the context of on War Terror, focusing on insurgent behavior. We know little about drones’ effectiveness in non-combat areas like peacekeeping. Because of this limitation, policymakers and scholars stand at risk of basing the deployment of drones in peacekeeping on assumptions made of their effectiveness in combat. Focusing on the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the DR Congo, I fill this gap by answering two crucial questions: 1) Under what conditions are drones effective for civilian protection in peacekeeping? 2) What shapes civilian support for their use in peacekeeping contexts?
I employ a qualitative methodology comprising expert interviews and document reviews to evaluate the effectiveness of drones for civilian protection in peacekeeping. I conducted expert interviews with UN officials at the UN headquarters and mission levels, mission intelligence officers, peacekeepers, and humanitarian workers. Insights from these data sources suggest that the effectiveness of drones for civilian protection in peacekeeping depends on the quality of accompanying peacekeeping operational capacity to enable peacekeepers to intervene timely to avert attacks on civilian populations. However, mission-level challenges of UN peacekeeping, including inadequate infrastructure on the ground to analyze drone surveillance data and lack of ground operational capacity, cause the deployment of drones to be poorly integrated into other mechanisms of peacekeeping that enable peacekeepers to intervene on the ground to prevent armed attacks against civilian populations.
Regarding civilian support for the deployment of drones in peacekeeping, I argue that the deployment of drones in peacekeeping has two implications for civilian populations in conflict contexts. On the one hand, drones can provide security for civilians, and on the other hand, they are a potential source of violation of privacy norms. I argue that civilian beliefs about these implications are shaped by the identity of actors deploying drones and perceptions about whether surveillance data from drones is accessible to outgroup members. I substantiate these arguments using an original survey experiment in the Eastern DR Congo, where United Nations peacekeepers have deployed drones.