Casualty recording news & views

The items posted here illustrate why transparent, humanising casualty recording is crucial. Although news reports of casualties are a staple of journalism, less frequently explored are the complexities of the recording process, the immediate and long-term benefits of doing it properly and the many harms involved in failing to do so. This collection examines those issues.

Analysis: How Washington Post strips casualties from covert drone data

First published 5th Nov 2012

First published on the Bureau of Investigative Journalism website by Chris Woods.

Alongside the Washington Post’s latest blockbuster reports on the Obama administration’s drone kill list is a new graphic, depicting US covert strikes since 2002.Based on studies by monitoring organisations, the graphic lists hundreds of US drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, in what the paper says will be a regularly updated project. Also detailed are ‘the names of prominent militant leaders killed in individual strikes,’ the paper says. But there the information stops.

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Drones and the legal obligation to record casualties: presentation by Professor Susan Breau

First published 25th Oct 2011

On Thursday 23 June at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), Oxford Research Group's everycasualty programme launched our major finding that there is a legal obligation to record every casualty of conflict, and that this obligation applies to the drone strikes being conducted in Pakistan and Yemen by the CIA. This is the presentation of Professor Susan Breau, Legal Consultant to everycasualty and Professor of International Law at Flinders University. more...

Drone warfare: cost and challenge

First published 20th Oct 2011

The repositioning of the United States' military strategy includes a great expansion in the use of armed drones to attack targets in Pakistan and Yemen. This development raises profound legal and ethical questions including the need to record the casualties of such attacks, argues Paul Rogers in this piece originally published on OpenDemocracy. more...