Remote controlled warfare: drones and the (un)making of accountability

Organised by AISSR Programme groups: Transnational Configurations, Conflict and Governance & Challenges to Democratic Representation

Debate

The aim of this seminar is to explore the implications of practices of remote controlled warfare in the making and unmaking of public accountability. Because of the remoteness it introduces into the practice of warfare, drone strikes place significant strain on the possibilities to hold the military and governments accountable for the killing of foreigners (and in some cases, of their own nationals) abroad.

The use of weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles, better known as drones, is becoming an increasingly central feature of contemporary warfare. While drones are currently deployed in official theatres of operation, such as Afghanistan, their use by the US authorities in covert airstrike campaigns in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia has extended and systematised the practice of extrajudicial killings and comes with hard-to-document civilian casualties. Drone strikes have correlatively become an object of contention in public awareness campaigns launched by organisations such as Human Rights Watch or academic institutions such as Columbia University and NYU.

Drone warfare blurs the distinction between fundamental legal and political categories such as peacetime and wartime or civilians and combatants. In the meantime, drone warfare has also spurred critical efforts in reestablishing and rethinking accountability in the context of so-called 'new ways of war'.

The seminar will build on this tension and explore the reliance on drone strikes in different contexts. It will bring together perspectives from political science, law and NGO practice, and invite debate on questions of conflicts, international relations and international law as well as science and technology studies.

Program

•  15.00-15.30 William Walters, Professor of Political Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Drone of the Public: Materials, Mediators and the Politics of Drone Strikes
• 15.30-15.45 Miriam Struyk and Wim Zwijnenburg, IKV Pax Christi, Does Unmanned Make Unacceptable?Exploring the Debate on Drones and Robots in Warfare
• 15.45-16.00 Gavin Sullivan, University of Amsterdam, Co-operating Lawyer with the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, Targeted Killings: Legal Implications and Political Exceptions
• 16.00-17.00 Discussion with the audience

Chair: Floris Vermeulen, University of Amsterdam

Published by  AISSR