Drones to protect

Abstract

While the more contentious use of drones to carry out targeted killings is often focused upon, very little attention has been paid to the potential benefits that their unarmed variants can offer in preventing the mass violation of human rights in conflict areas. Drones have already been employed with some success to support UN peacekeepers. This paper looks at their use in monitoring and deterring deliberate acts of harm against civilian populations in situations where the international community is unwilling or unable to deploy a peacekeeping force on the ground. With an appropriate command, control and dissemination arrangement in place, the use of surveillance drones could provide a viable option between doing nothing and committing to full-scale military intervention. Combined with clear signalling of intent to prosecute such crimes as soon as circumstances allow, knowing that one’s actions might be observed and recorded could potentially curb and restrain the perpetrators of human rights atrocities.

Keywords:

• drones
• monitoring
• human rights
• deterrence
• prosecution
• peacekeeping
• UAVs
• RPAS
• accountability

Acknowledgements

This article is based on the ideas set out by B.J. Strawser and D. Whetham, ‘Eyes Over Syria: Using Drones to Monitor Atrocities’, RUSI Analysis, 27 August 2013.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

David Whetham is Senior Lecturer in Defence Studies at King's College London, based at the Joint Services Command and Staff College at the UK Defence Academy. Publications include Ethics, Law and Military Operations (Palgrave, 2010), Just Wars and Moral Victories (Brill, 2009) and with Andrea Ellner & Paul Robinson (Eds), When Soldiers Say No: Selective Conscientious Objection in the Modern Military (Ashgate: 2014).

Notes

1 David Whetham, ‘Drones: the Moral Ups and Downs’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute (June 2013).

2 For example, B. Medea, Drone Warfare: Killing By Remote Control (London: Verso Books, 2013); B.J. Strawser, Killing By Remote Control: The Ethics of an Unmanned Military (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

3 Neil MacLucas, ‘U.N. Says Syria Deaths Near 200,000’, Wall Street Journal, 22 August 2014. http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-n-says-syria-deaths-near-200-000-1408697916

4 United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Syria Regional Refugee Response, November 16, 2014. http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php

5 J. Karlsrud and F. Rosén, ‘In the Eye of the Beholder? The UN and the Use of Drones to Protect Civilians’, Stability: International Journal of Security & Development 2, no. 2 (2013): 27, 1–10. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/sta.bo

6 Human Rights Watch, 2011–14, Human Rights in Syria. https://www.hrw.org/middle-eastn-africa/syria

7 Ibid.

8 David Williams and Tania Steere, ‘Lined Up and Executed, Their Severed Heads Put on Display as a Warning to Others: Horrific New Photographs of ISIS Atrocities’, Mail Online, 8 August 2014. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2719991/Horrific-new-photographs-ISIS-atrocities-prompted-Obama-act.html#ixzz3JFub32sd

9 Paolo Tripodi, ‘Understanding Atrocities: What Commanders Can Do to Prevent Them’, in Ethics, Law and Military Operations, ed. David Whetham (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010), 175.

10 Per-Olof H. Wikström, Andromachi Tseloni, and Dimitris Karlis, ‘Do People Comply With the Law Because They Fear Getting Caught?’, European Journal of Criminology 8 (September 2011): 401–20.

11 B.A. Olken, ‘Monitoring Corruption: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia’, Journal of Political Economy 115 (2007): 200–49.

12 One can see this intention ‘to put an end to impunity for the perpetrators of these crimes and thus to contribute to the prevention of such crimes’ declared in the preamble to the Rome Statute of the ICC. See http://www.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/PIDS/publications/RomeStatutEng.pdf

13 For example, see Matt Steinglass, ‘Lubanga Sentence Sets Legal Deterrent’, The Financial Times, 10 July 2012. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5c3ec040-cab1-11e1-89be-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3JGu3IuZ5. Reputational issues mean that actors who wish to govern post conflict may be induced to moderate their behaviour through a fear of indictment. See BA Simmons and AM Danner, ‘Credible Commitments and the International Criminal Court’, International Organization 64 (2010): 2.

14 Human Rights Watch, Sudan: Satellite Images Confirm Villages Destroyed, 18 June 2013. http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/06/18/sudan-satellite-images-confirm-villages-destroyed

15 BBC News, ‘Marine Guilty of Afghanistan Murder’, 8 November 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24870699

16 The role of misplaced peer-to-peer loyalty in such situations is explored in Stephen Coleman, Military Ethics: An Introduction with Case Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), Chapter 3.

17 Cris Burgess, Risk-Taking Behaviour (unpublished 2002).

18 Ministry of Defence, International Defence Engagement Strategy, 2013. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/international-defence-engagement-strategy

19 Paul Robinson, Nigel de Lee, and Don Carrick, eds., Ethics Education in the Military (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).

20 See David Whetham, ‘Expeditionary Military Ethics’, in Handbook of Military Ethics, ed. George R. Lucas (Abingdon: Routledge, forthcoming 2015).

21 H.G. Grasmick, and D.E. Green, ‘Legal Punishment, Social Disapproval and Internalization as Inhibitors of Illegal Behavior’, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 71 (1980): 4.

22 M. Verkuyten, Why Do People Follow (Formal) Rules? (Rotterdam: Erasmus University, 1992).

23 Burgess, Risk-Taking Behaviour.

24 Verkuyten, Why Do People Follow (Formal) Rules?, 3.

25 D. Whetham, interviews with Organisation, Mentoring and Liaison Team members from Afghanistan (2010).

26 The link between knowledge of being observed and behaviour modification is not straightforward. In terms of CCTV and recorded changes in criminal behaviour, see Coretta Phillips, ‘A Review of CCTV Evaluations’, Crime Prevention Studies, Vol.10, ed. Kate Painter and Nick Tilley (Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press, 1999), 123–55.

27 Diana E. Schaffner, ‘The Legality of Using Drones to Unilaterally Monitor Atrocity Crimes’, Fordham International Law Journal, 35, No. 4 (2012): 1125.

28 See Jus Post Bellum in Whetham, Ethics, Law and Military Operations, 83.

29 Allen Buchanan and Robert O. Keohane, ‘Toward a Drone Accountability Regime’, Ethics and International Affairs (forthcoming, Spring 2015).

30 D. Whetham, ‘Drones and Targeted Killing: Angels or Assassins?’, in Killing by Remote Control: The Ethics of an Unmanned Military, ed. B.J. Strawser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 135.

31 Jonathan E. Davis, ‘From Ideology to Pragmatism: China's Position on Humanitarian Intervention in the Post-Cold War Era’, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, 44, no. 2 (2011): 232.

32 David Whetham, ‘Drones: the Moral Ups and Downs’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute (June 2013): 28.

33 This is a point acknowledged in United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Humanitarian Response (OCHA Policy and Studies Series, June 2014), 11.

34 Human Rights Watch, The Right Whose Time Has Come (Again), 2014. http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014/essays/privacy-in-age-of-surveillance

35 Hyung-Jin Kim, ‘Suspected North Korean Drones Reflect New Threat’, Huffington Post, 4 April 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/04/north-korean-drones_n_5090150.html

36 C. Lynch, ‘U.N. Wants to Use Drones for Peacekeeping Missions’, 2013. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/un-seeks-drones-for-peacekeeping-missions/2013/01/08/39575660-599e-11e2-88d0-c4cf65c3ad15_story.html

37 This may be part of the political calculation in the publicity surrounding the deployment of observation drones to the Ukraine by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. See Jason Hovet and Jan Lopatka, ‘OSCE Says Will Use Drones for Ceasefire Monitoring in Ukraine’, Reuters, 10 September 2014. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/10/us-ukraine-crisis-osce-idUSKBN0H50Q920140910

38 ‘Exelis Demonstrates Detection Capabilities of New LWIR HIS Airborne Sensor’, Unmanned Systems Technology, 14 May 2014. http://www.unmannedsystemstechnology.com/2014/05/exelis-demonstrates-detection-capabilities-of-new-lwir-hsi-airborne-sensor/

39 E. Isango, ‘Drone Crash in Congo Kills 1, Injures 2’, Washington Post, 3 October 2006. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/03/AR2006100300778.html