Do Less Harm
Protecting and Compensating Civilians in War
Article Summary and Author Biography
The Afghanistan and Iraq wars taught the United States painful lessons about the need to limit harm to civilians and compensate victims for their suffering. Now Washington must turn that ad hoc progress into a permanent policy, followed not only by its military but also by those of its partners as well.
SARAH HOLEWINSKI is Executive Director of Center for Civilians in Conflict. Follow her on Twitter @SarahAtCivic.
News & Events
Sarah Holewinski and Micah Zenko discuss Washington's drone strike policies and the nomination of John Brennan with Foreign Affairs Editor Gideon Rose.
Video
Editor Gideon Rose interviews Sarah Holewinski, executive director of Center for Civilians in Conflict, about the need to better compensate civilian victims of war.
Blood money: an Afghan man displaying cash offered as compensation for the death of two of his sons, in Paktia Province, March 2010. (James_Gordon_LosAngeles / Flickr)
Everyone knows that civilians suffer in war. Even in lawfully conducted conflicts waged for legitimate causes, they lose lives, limbs, and loved ones. What fewer understand is that there are no laws that oblige warring parties to help the civilians they've harmed, as long as the action that caused the harm is considered legal. A fighter jet can strike a weapons cache next to a home, a guard can shoot a suspicious biker at a checkpoint, and a convoy can speed through a playground, but so long as in each instance the armed forces follow the Geneva Conventions' rules of discrimination and proportionality, they never have to explain, apologize, or pay for those losses.
Aside from being ethically bankrupt, indifference toward the plight of civilians has practical drawbacks: for survivors of war, nothing can generate more hatred toward a foreign government than never having their grief acknowledged. Responding is not simply an act of compassion; it is an act of strategic self-interest.
The United States learned that lesson the hard way in Afghanistan and Iraq. For years, Afghans and Iraqis whose family members were killed or maimed took to the streets to protest what they saw as the Americans' callous indifference to civilian casualties. After the U.S. military finally came to understand that survivors' anger undermined the mission, it started tracking the damage it caused and responding directly to affected families. It managed to create a new culture geared toward understanding and addressing the civilian costs of its combat operations...
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