Recording Casualties of Armed Conflict

Programme team: 

Hamit Dardagan [1]

Hamit Dardagan became ORG’s Consultant on Civilian Casualties in War in March 2007. He is co-founder and principal researcher at Iraq Body Count (IBC), where he has taken the lead on the development of IBC's analytic tools and ouputs.. He has written for Counterpunch, and has undertaken research for a number of organisations, including Greenpeace. He has been chair of Kalayaan a human rights campaign for overseas domestic workers in the UK, which led to significant enhancement in their legal rights.

John Sloboda [2]

John Sloboda is Consultant and Director of Oxford Research Group's Recording Casualties in Armed Conflic [3]t programme and chairs its International Advisory Group.  From 2004 to 2009 he was Executive Director of ORG.  He is also Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Keele, and an Honorary Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London. Since 2003, he has been co-director of the Iraq Body Count [4] project, which remains the only continuously updated source of event-based information about civilian casualties in the ongoing Iraq conflict. He undertakes regular speaking engagements, and is an occasional author for openDemocracy [5]. In July 2004, John was elected to the Fellowship of the British Academy.

Advisory board:

• Dr Susan Breau – Reader in International Law, University of Surrey
• Dr Neta Crawford – Professor of Political Science, Boston University
• Hamit Dardagan – Consultant on Civilian Casualties in Conflict, ORG (O)
• Dr Eric Herring – Reader in International Politics, Bristol University
• Hanny Megally – Middle East Director, International Commission on Transitional Justice (O)
• Richard Moyes – Director of Policy & Research, Action on Armed Violence (O)
• Tom Porteous – UK Director, Human Rights Watch (O)
• Dr Jay Silverstein – Professor of Anthropology, University of Hawaii
• Professor Michael Spagat – Department of Economics, Royal Holloway University of London
• Mirsad Tokaca – Director, Research and Documentation Centre of Sarajevo (O)

(O = organisational member, others are serving in personal capacity)

The long-term aim of this human security project is to build the technical and institutional capacity, as well as the political will, to record details of every single victim of violent conflict, worldwide. This represents the next step beyond existing estimation and other aggregate ‘measurement’ of human losses (such as numerical totals) to the identification and documentation of each and every individual who is killed or injured in armed conflicts. Among other benefits, such recording acts as a memorial for posterity and a recognition of our common humanity across the world. Most importantly, it will ensure that the full cost of conflict is known and can be understood to the greatest extent achievable, and become an immediately applicable component, and resource for, conflict prevention and post-conflict recovery and reconciliation.

Achieving the aims of this project will require the active participation of states and inter-state bodies (up to and including the United Nations), and such activity may eventually become codified in formal and binding agreements on parties to conflicts. State support will be hastened by strong civil society advocacy, highlighting the moral and practical advantages.

Some conflict documentation is already being carried out, by varied actors with varying methods and varying levels of resource. Projects can be officially sponsored/sanctioned or they can be unofficial citizen-led activities. A wide range of users and potential users of such detailed information has already been identified. 

Progress to date

In 2007 a consultation document (PDF [6]) which was sent for comment to over 200 experts worldwide. Consultees were selected to cover a wide range of relevant professional expertise: legal, military, humanitarian and methodological. A series of small consultative roundtables were held to refine and develop the concept further and the outcome of these consultations was the setting up of an international advisory group in January 2008 to guide the project through its next stages.

Global practitioner network

In 2009, ORG launched the first major activity of the programme, a international practitioner network for casualty recorders. There are many locally-based organisations operating in zones of current or recent conflict working to collect, record, and ultimately memorialise the casualties of conflict. However, the predominant feature of their work is that each organisation operates in relative isolation, devising solutions in an ad-hoc manner, being largely unaware of the work that is going on elsewhere. There has been a clearly expressed need for a platform to allow such organisations to network productively with each other, and address common problems and aspirations.

Joint Communiqué

On the 25th of November 2009, the twenty founding members of the international practitioner network released the following first joint communiqué:

The organisations listed below announce the formation of the first international network of organisations who publicly record the victims of armed conflict as individuals, which has now begun its activities.

We believe that documenting the details of every human killed in war is a moral act based on recognising the value of every human life. We also believe that it is necessary for justice, holding the prosecutors of war to account, as a means to overcome uncertainties about deaths which are only recorded as numbers, and as a way of constructing a lasting historical memory of the dead.

Failure to comprehensively record every individual casualty of war can only bring greater pain and suffering. This suffering ranges from the denial of the experience of victims’ families, all the way through to community grievances which stimulate the renewal or escalation of violent conflict through politically motivated claims. The only long term answer to these problems is the establishment of detailed and certain truth.

We will collaborate to raise our capacity, visibility and collective strength, thereby enhancing casualty recording activities worldwide. Together we will be better able to overcome the problems we face every day in our work. Our final goal is that the world recognise the need to record every casualty of every conflict wherever it happens.

We call on governments and intergovernmental agencies to support the activity of casualty recording worldwide.

The communique will shortly be available in español.

Current members of the practitioner network:

• Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission [7] (AIHRC), Afghanistan
• B'Tselem [8], Israel
• Conflict Analysis Resource Center [9] (CERAC), Colombia
• Darfur Peace and Development [10], USA
• Elman Peace Centre [11], Mogadishu, Somalia
• Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation [12] (FAFG), Guatemala
• The Human Rights Center [13], Georgia
• The Humanitarian Law Centre [14], Serbia
• INSEC [15], Nepal
• The Institute for Conflict Management [16], India
• Iraq Body Count [4], UK
• Kaah Foundation, Galguduud and Mudug Regions, Somalia
• National Society for Human Rights [17], Namibia
• Organisation for Human Rights Activists (OHURA), Hiraan Region, Somalia
• Organization for Somalis Protection and Development [18] (OSPAD), Somalia
• Palestinian Center for Human Rights [19], Gaza
• The Research and Documentation Center of Sarajevo [20], Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Rift Valley Institute [21], UK
• Somali Human Rights Association (SOHRA), Lower Shabelle and Mogadishu, Somalia
• Sri Lankan War Victims Registry [22], UK

Objectives for 2009-11

With key partners we will convene and co-ordinate an interlocking set of sub-projects under two main streams:

Stream A – Support and development of effective practice in casualty recording: This stream will focus on those organisations and individuals that have already made direct contributions to the work of casualty recording. It also creates and facilitates a more effective and united voice among practitioners.

Stream B – Development of international norms and standards: This stream will focus on developing the concepts and tools which will be necessary for governments and intergovernmental organisations to come together in a concerted way to support the spread of effective and credible casualty recording.

Funders

This project has received grant support from The Funding Network and The Network for Social Change.