No Flying Allowed: The 15 Countries Where Drones Are Banned

After a round of comprehensive research, our team compiled our master list of drone laws for countries throughout the world.

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While conducting research to make these pages, here are a few things that stood out:

• Drone adoption is growing. Out of around 200 countries, about 45 had passed drone laws since our last big update over a year ago. That is a lot of countries and indicates a general trend of adoption throughout the world.
• Many countries still lack drone laws. Although drone legislation now exists in about 25% more countries than the last time we did a major overhaul of these pages, it’s still lacking in many countries. In fact, our research found that there are 70 countries that still have no drone laws at all on their books—or about 35% of the countries in the world.
• Only a small group of countries ban drones. Although drone laws simply don’t exist in a lot of countries, only a relatively small group of countries ban the use of drones completely—15, or about 7.5% of the world’s countries, to be exact.

Why Ban Drones?

In general, we found two primary reasons that countries ban drones:

1) They’re just not sure what to do about drones, so they’ve decided to ban them altogether until they can develop the appropriate legislation.

In a similar vein, we’ve encountered several countries in our research whose policies for flying a UAV are so strict—things like requiring you to obtain approval from three different government entities, pay a huge registration fee, or seek permission before each individual flight, for instance—that they have effectively banned drone use as well.

2) They want to control information, and their population’s ability to obtain it.

We’re not going to name names, but these countries will be pretty clear when you scan the list below. We’re talking about authoritarian countries that often impost severe restrictions on the freedoms of their citizens—in these cases, it’s not much of a surprise why drones are banned, because things like Facebook, or just open access to the internet, might be banned there as well.

As drone adoption grows throughout the world, we would expect to see many of those countries that don’t have drone laws, or that have banned drones for the first reason listed above, start to pass drone legislation—it won’t be too long before drones are a generally accepted tool for agriculture, deliveries, and other commercial work, and those countries who aren’t regulating drones will simply be missing out.

In some areas, organizations are even popping up to spur drone adoption in order to help the economy grow—in Sub-Saharan Africa., for example, the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (CTA) was created in partnership with drone manufacturer Parrot to promote the set-up of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) services throughout the region.

Although many African countries still lack drone laws or have banned drones altogether, some—such as Rwanda, Namibia, and South Africa, for starters—have developed robust drone laws, and are leading the way for neighboring nations to do the same themselves.

The 15 Countries Where Drones Are Banned

Wondering which countries ban drones? Here they are.

Algeria

Algeria’s National Aviation Authority: Directorate of Civil Aviation and Meteorology of Algeria (DACM)

Contact information: dg@egsa-alger.dz / +213 2 74 06 99

 

Barbados

Barbados’ National Aviation Authority: Barbados Civil Aviation Department (BCAD)

Contact information: civilav@caribsurf.com / +1 246 535-0001

 

Brunei

Brunei’s National Aviation Authority: Brunei Department Of Civil Aviation (DCA)

Contact information: info.dca@civil-aviation.gov.bn / +673 7292187

 

Cote d’Ivoire

Cote d’Ivoire’s National Aviation Authority: National Authority of Civil Aviation (ANAC)

Contact information: anacsvat@anac.ci / +225 21 58 69 00

 

Cuba

Cuba’s National Aviation Authority: Civil Aviation Institute of Cuba (IACC)

Contact information: webmaster@iacc.gov.cu / +53 537 834-4949

 

Iran

Iran’s National Aviation Authority: Civil Aviation Organization of Iran (CAOI)

Contact information: info@cao.ir / +98 21 603 6341

 

Iraq

Iraq’s National Aviation Authority: Iraq Civil Aviation Authority (ICAA)

Contact information: dg@iraqcaa.com / +964 1 813 3370

 

Kuwait

Kuwait’s National Aviation Authority: The Kuwaiti Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA)

 

Contact information: dg@dgca.gov.kw / DGCA Contact Form

 

Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan’s National Aviation Authority: Civil Aviation Authority of Kyrgyzstan (CAA)

Contact information: mail@caa.kg / +996 312 251 619

 

Madagascar

Madagascar’s National Aviation Authority: Civilian Aviation Directorate of Madagascar (CAD)

Contact information: acm@acm.mg / +261 20 222 2438

 

Morocco

Morocco’s National Aviation Authority: Moroccan Directorate of Civil Aeronautics (DCA)

information: DCA Contact Form / +212 3 773 242

 

Nicaragua

Nicaragua’s National Aviation Authority: Nicaraguan Institute of Civil Aeronautics (INAC)

Contact information: divulgacion@inac.gob.ni / +505 2276 8580

Senegal

Senegal’s National Aviation Authority: Senegal’s National Agency of Civil Aviation (ANAC)

Contact information: anacim@anacim.sn / +221 33 865 60 00

 

Syria

Syria’s National Aviation Authority: Syrian Civil Aviation Authority (SCAA)

Contact information: SCAA Contact Page / + 963 11 333381

 

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan’s National Aviation Authority: Uzbekistan Civil Aviation Administration (UZCAA)

Contact information: uab@uzcaa.uz / +998 71 133 2313

 

Want to learn more about drone laws throughout the world? Check out our newly updated master list of drone laws, where you can find information on all the drone laws out there.

Know something we don’t about drone laws in any of these countries, or know about additional countries that ban drones? Send us an email at support[at]horizonap[dot]com—if we missed something, please reach out to let us know.