"Game of Drones?" How the human/non-human assemblage in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has a governmentality effect.

Abstract

In contradiction to the large body of academic work that focusses on the use of armed drones by actors involved in conflict zones, this research seeks to respond to the shortfall on empirical and critical research on drones by humanitarians in conflict situations. It does so by examining how drones in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo became deployed and are used as a governance tool. By answering the main research question “How does the human/non-human assemblage have a governmentality effect in the United Nations Stabilization mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) since the deployment of drones in 2013?”, this thesis shows that the use of drones as a governance tool was the outcome of a fuzzy process. By using the assemblage approach, it shows how many actors influenced each other, formed and disengaged in alliances, and how power and resistance to such power played an inherent role in this process. It argues that the outcome of this process and power struggle between several actors eventually leads to a robust, coercive governmentality effect in the peacekeeping mission in the DRC, in which technological tools like drones play an increasingly important role. However, examination of the case-study on the DRC has also shown that there are many flaws and inconsistencies in the use of drones as a governance tool used by humanitarian actors. Therefore, it urges drone-critics and civil society organizations to be attentive and be similarly critical to the use of drones by humanitarian actors as they are to the use of drones by actors in a conflict.