Lifting the Fog of War? Opportunities and Challenges of Drones in UN Peace Operations

UN peace operations are increasingly adding surveillance drones to their capabilities. The first mission to acquire such capability was the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – MONUSCO at the end of 2013. Concurrent with the inclusion of the surveillance drones, MONUSCO was also given a new and much more robust mandate, including the Force Intervention Brigade, consisting of troops from Malawi, Tanzania, and South Africa. In Mali, the UN mission, MINUSMA, is given a robust mandate by the UN Security Council to respond to a challenging environment, and also here the UN is in the process of adding drones to mission capabilities. Contributing to the broader critical debate on “good drones”, this chapter examines some implications of including surveillance drones as a tool of UN peacekeeping. Building on the authors’ research on international peacekeeping (including interviews with key UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations staff), media reports, and academic literature, the chapter argues that drones can help the UN to better protect civilians, and implement mandated tasks, but also asks if this is perhaps the first step towards weaponized drones in the UN. We believe this would be a worrying development, particularly when analyzed in conjunction with the more general tendency towards increasingly robust peacekeeping missions.