Drone-enabled surveillance is fast becoming all-pervasive, having moved rapidly from military combat to other areas of law enforcement including migration control. This will raise new challenges, as civil liberties may be impacted as drones are used to monitor our actions and movements, says Stellenbosch University Political Science international relations expert Dr Raenette Taljaard.
Her studies for her doctoral dissertation found that there has been considerable normalisation of drone use by politicians and policymakers, as well as in popular culture through cinematography, and that such normalisation represents a fundamental challenge to the core principles of international law, international human rights law and international humanitarian law, she says.
“The study flags concerns about what such normalisation may mean for future wars that could use lethal autonomous weapons and the geopolitical consequences of such wars if established prescriptions of international law are eroded."
According to Taljaard, there is a need for greater public awareness globally regarding the significance of some of the broader societal changes these new systems represent.
“We need much greater clarity and transparency and greater collaboration between academics, civil society, lobbyists and multilateral and regional bodies to ensure a richly textured discourse and policy process regarding drones that will allow their productive leveraging for the benefit of humanity and transcend the ‘bad’ and ‘good’ drone binary we see in current discourses on drones.”
Taljaard says that, even though the use of drones in combat situations has mostly occurred in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, many States around the world are rapidly increasing the development of drones and drone swarm technology.
“Drone proliferation is taking place globally. There can be little doubt that drones and drone proliferation, and the concomitant surveillance, will dramatically increase global instability.”
Two specific incidents, namely when Iran shot down a US drone in its airspace and a drone attack on Saudi oilfields, have shown how dire a drone war in a place like the broader Middle East might be, she adds.
International human rights group, feminist organisations, and the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteurs, besides others, have challenged the normalisation of the use of drones.
“In the context of UN disarmament talks on the Convention on Conventional Weapons, expert groups on lethal autonomous weapon systems, the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, and other like-minded civil society groups, are making progress on seeking to call for a ban on lethal autonomous weapon systems.”
Taljaard's studies for her doctoral dissertation focused on how the world talks about drones, the use of force and targeted killing, how it is being normalised, and what the geopolitical and geostrategic implications of this may be.
Taljaard analysed policymakers' speeches in the Obama administration on the use of drones, which was a time when drone use became more widespread and visible. She also looked at how drones were represented and used in cinematography and how such representations serve to justify their use in the public’s mind.
This was contrasted with an analysis of resistance to such normalisation by, among others, United Nations Special Rapporteurs and transnational global human rights and feminist organisations such as CODEPINK and the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.