Description
Armed drones have increasingly become a weapon of choice of both democratic and non-democratic states alike. As a result, their use is a much-discussed topic in academia and beyond. The relevance of gender in the context of drone strikes, however, remains largely unexplored. This is highly problematic as feminist research has shown how gender produces the distinction between combatants and civilians, is used as a ‘shortcut’ to assigning combatant status and thus has decisive implications for the protection of civilians. Therefore, this paper investigates how gender is implicitly and explicitly structuring the framework regulating the targeting process of NATO drone strikes by conducting a feminist critical discourse analysis of both relevant military doctrine and semi-structured interviews with NATO officials involved in the drafting of these regulations. It is informed by the approaches of Feminist Security Studies and Critical Legal Studies. The insights gained through this analysis have crucial implications for the protection of civilians, the ‘precision claim’ often brought forward by proponents of armed drones and the regulation of the use of armed drones more broadly.
Key words: gender, armed drones, targeting, civilian protection
