The Rise of the Humanitarian Drone: Giving Content to an Emerging Concept

The document explores the 'humanitarian drone' as a 'war dividend' from military spending, arguing that the transfer of UAV hardware—including surveillance, cargo, and weaponized drones—also transfers military rationales such as 'surgical precision' and 'targeting logic' into the humanitarian sector. The authors warn that the push for humanitarian drones is driven by a commercial logic to gain legitimacy for the UAV industry and may lead to the dehumanization of suffering or a lowered threshold for the use of force through 'humanitarian combat drones.' While drones offer potential for improved aid delivery and crisis mapping, the paper emphasizes that technology is not neutral and cannot replace the empathy and ethical judgment essential to humanitarian work.

• The 'humanitarian drone' is conceptualized as a 'war dividend,' where technology developed for the 'war on terror' in Iraq and Afghanistan is repurposed for foreign aid and peacekeeping in disaster areas.
• The UAV industry actively promotes the 'humanitarian' branding of drones to expand markets and gain legitimacy among the general public and regulators, attempting to distance the technology from its association with warzones.
• Hardware transfers occur across three main categories: surveillance UAVs (used by NATO, EU, and UN for peace support and search and rescue), cargo-carrying UAVs (intended for delivering medicines and aid to remote areas), and weaponized UAVs (deployed for the 'protection of civilians').
• The transfer of hardware also brings military practices, specifically the rhetoric of 'surgical precision' and 'targeting logic,' which the authors argue may lead to a technocratic 'un-seeing' of human suffering and a reliance on interpretive data over local knowledge.
• The use of 'humanitarian combat drones' for the protection of civilians may paradoxically lower the threshold for the use of force by presenting drone strikes as a 'quick fix' or a 'measure short of full-scale war,' potentially undermining the principle of last resort.
• While drones are proposed as tools for 'global justice'—such as witnessing atrocities or eliminating aid corruption—the authors note a lack of attention to critical issues regarding data protection, privacy, and the ethics of witnessing.

APA

Sandvik, & Lohne (2014). The Rise of the Humanitarian Drone: Giving Content to an Emerging Concept. Peace Research Institute Oslo. https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/1bfa971c-35bb-4a07-924c-e710af7bc730/The Rise of the Humanitarian Drone Giving Content to an Emerging Concept.pdf?inline=true

Chicago

Sandvik, and Lohne. The Rise of the Humanitarian Drone: Giving Content to an Emerging Concept. Peace Research Institute Oslo, 2014. https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/1bfa971c-35bb-4a07-924c-e710af7bc730/The Rise of the Humanitarian Drone Giving Content to an Emerging Concept.pdf?inline=true.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Sandvik |last2=Lohne |title=The Rise of the Humanitarian Drone: Giving Content to an Emerging Concept |publisher=Peace Research Institute Oslo |date=2014 |url=https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/1bfa971c-35bb-4a07-924c-e710af7bc730/The Rise of the Humanitarian Drone Giving Content to an Emerging Concept.pdf?inline=true |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{sandvik2014rise, author = {Sandvik and Lohne}, title = {{The Rise of the Humanitarian Drone: Giving Content to an Emerging Concept}}, institution = {Peace Research Institute Oslo}, year = {2014}, url = {https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/1bfa971c-35bb-4a07-924c-e710af7bc730/The Rise of the Humanitarian Drone Giving Content to an Emerging Concept.pdf?inline=true}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }