Is There an Emerging Transnational Advocacy Network in Opposition to Weaponized Drones?

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones by the United States for carrying out targeted killings in territories throughout the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa has by now become a routine, but controversial, American counter-terrorism practice. In recent years, these drone strikes have been regularly denounced by human rights organizations and have also drawn the critical attention of United Nations special rapporteurs on account of the civilian casualties such attacks frequently cause in apparent violation of international norms governing the use of military force. Perhaps just as significant, however, in continuing to resist the normalization of drone warfare, has been the increasing activism of a variety of like-minded norm entrepreneurs involved in the production and dissemination of knowledge about its legal aspects and realities created on the ground. Volunteer lawyers representing victims/survivors of drone attacks have been pursuing litigation in different national jurisdictions, most notably in the United Kingdom and in Pakistan, to identify liable parties and publicize their alleged complicity. Concurrently, the epistemic community of international law scholars and practitioners has been engaged in public intellectual debates concerning the legality and morality of drone warfare, while investigative journalists have (often at their own peril) continued to document attack incidents and play a significant role in bringing these facts to public attention. This paper explores whether, and to what extent, these separate, yet complementary, initiatives may be indicative of an emerging transnational advocacy network opposed to the use and proliferation of weaponized drones.