(In)Direct Participation in Hostilities?: a historico-legal study of how participation in the wartime Ukrainian drone industry since 2022 may affect c

Since Russia's major escalation of hostilities with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on the 24th February 2022, drones have increasingly been placed in the spotlight. Understood to be tactically advantageous, smaller drones have been deployed on the front lines for surveillance or to destroy enemy positions, weaponry stocks, and armoured vehicles.

While the use of aerial drones in conflict is not novel, the Ukrainian efforts to drive this industry in response to the invasion has driven new trends. The proliferation of drones has influenced both ways that they are being used by state armed forces during conflict, how civilians interact with them, and subsequently increased civilian participation in hostilities.

Civilians have been mobilised within the drone industry as heads of innovation and production within close proximity to hostilities in Ukraine. Although since 1945 most wartime industries have operated at a distance from the fighting, civilians are using their own personal spaces within densely populated areas to produce drones for the armed forces and begin start-up production companies.

These drones are then regularly being used to harm Russian belligerents as an important element of the war effort.

Civilian participation in hostilities has several implications within international norms, driving potential areas of contestation. This is where my project is focused. Sites of contestation, as I will discuss, can encourage normative transformation which, if they are not carefully studied, could lead to the degradation of civilian status and the protections these populations are deserved currently.

While a lot of existing literature questions the (r)evolutionary effect of drones on the battlefield, not enough attention has been focused on the ways that these emerging technologies have subsequently brought civilians closer to hostilities. This 'civilianisation' of armed conflict must be further researched because has the potential to blur previous binary considerations which label individuals as either combatants or non-combatants.

Civilians with occupations within or supporting their armed forces are now pivotal to the function of these forces. Thus, through an interrogation of current international norms as they are expressed within international humanitarian law (IHL) and its further non-binding instruments, my project aims to answer several research questions:

1 How does civilian participation in the Ukrainian drone industry contest with current international norms?

o How have interpretations of IHL informed current approaches to civilian protection and civilian participation in Ukraine?

o What normative transformation has the increase in civilian participation in the Ukrainian drone industry begun and what could it cause in the future? 2 Why are civilians choosing to participate in the Ukrainian drone industry?

o What are the motives of civilians participating in the Ukrainian drone industry and how does this form their own identities as individuals participating in hostilities?

This project will discuss aerial drones, their context within Ukraine, and emerging trends of civilian participation. Through an interrogation of international norms and how they are created I will uncover how Ukrainian civilian participation contests with these norms and may influence them to transform. These norms will be put into the context of IHL, focusing primarily on the notion of 'direct participation in hostilities' and the principles of proportionality, distinction, and military necessity.

My research will use interviews with individuals who produce drones for the Ukrainian armed forces to understand how they structure their identity and interpret norms. These interviews will be used to form a theoretical framework to understand civilian participation in hostilities and the potential consequences that current actions have considering the current state of international norms.