A brief history of the everycasualty project


The everycasualty project was initiated in 2007 at the Oxford Research Group (ORG, UK Registered Charity No. 299436) with seed funding from The Funding Network. Its proponents at ORG were John Sloboda (then ORG's Executive Director) and Hamit Dardagan (ORG's consultant on civilian casualties), who together had co-founded the Iraq Body Count project. As practitioners themselves they were keenly aware of the need for casualty recording to be widely adopted as a norm for all armed conflicts throughout the world.

ORG then undertook a series of round-table consultations involving, among others, exemplary practitioners, experts in international humanitarian law, human rights advocates, social scientists, and specialists from organisations such as the WHO and ICRC.

This led to circulation of a consultation document among a wider circle of hundreds of interested parties outlining the basis, aims and proposed scope of the ORG project, enabling the everycasualty programme (until 2011 called Recording Casualties of Armed Conflict, RCAC) to proceed with two carefully defined, complementary programme streams.

Major milestones since then include:

  • Founded the International Practitioner Network (IPN) of casualty recording organisations

  • Embarked upon the methods research project (lead responsibility, Elizabeth Minor, everycasualty researcher; consultancy by Prof Michael Spagat; funded by United States Institute of Peace and The Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland)

  • Carried out research into international law leading to publication of papers on existing legal obligations to record civilian casualties of armed conflict and drone attacks (authors Prof. Susan Breau and Rachel Joyce; funded by The Funding Network)

  • Entered into joint advocacy initiatives with NGO partners on Civil Society input to the Oslo Commitments

  • Broadened scope to include all armed violence where casualties are commonly unrecorded, not just armed conflict

  • First IPN conference held in London (lead responsibility, Jacob Beswick, everycasualty programme officer; consultancy and chairing by Everett Ressler; funded by zivik, part of the German Federal Foreign Ministry)

  • Charter and advocacy launched with IPN partners at the British Academy (funded by zivik)