The Dehumanisation of Drone Warfare: Scrutinising the Legal Response to the Proliferation of UAVs in Contemporary Armed Conflict

This thesis introduces the notion of dehumanisation, elucidates its relationship with detachment and distance, and demonstrates how technology, in particular drone warfare, has contributed to detachment and dehumanisation in armed conflict. Drone warfare is transforming war from defined periods of high-intensity conflict in concentrated geographical locations to continuous and indefinite periods of low-intensity operations without boundaries. This blurs the line between war and peace, creating greater human insecurity towards life. The thesis assesses the legal response to this rapid development of technology and changing landscape of armed conflict. The thesis scrutinises International Humanitarian Law (IHL), International Human Rights Law (IHRL), and UK domestic governance. The research concludes that through physical and psychological distancing, drones anonymise the enemy, leading to a partial dehumanisation whereby the humanity of a person is masked, blurred, or faded. This in turn leads to a reduced resistance to killing and a greater willingness to engage in low-intensity operations involving armed attack.

The thesis further concludes that there are weaknesses in laws that may be exploited by the technological advancements of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), and that incremental adjustments must be made to ensure the proper regulation of UAVs in armed conflict. States enjoy the ability to deploy independent drone operations without the responsibility of committing to an official armed conflict. IHL cannot be applied in times of peace, and IHRL faces problems of enforceability. The normative applicability of law is therefore limited and undermined. This thesis proposes that use of military drones should be limited to official and legally recognised armed conflicts, while calling for further clarification and unification on the relationship between IHL and IHRL.