US DoD Civilian Harm and Mitigation Response Plan – what is it, and what does it propose to do? - Marc Garlasco
09/07/22 • 46 min
On 25 Aug 2022, the US Department of Defense released its Civilian Harm and Mitigation Response Plan, which has been created, in part as a result of the public scrutiny on civilian casualty incidents following the Iraq campaign.
In this episode, Dr Lauren Sanders speaks with Marc Garlasco, who has been intimately involved with this issue, having been engaged in stakeholder engagement with the US DoD during their development of this plan when it was announced on 27 Jan 2022.
Marc has a long history of observing and reporting on civilian casualty incidents, using his understanding of the process garnered from his time as a a US intelligence analyst. He has served with HRW, as a senior civilian protection officer for United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA); and as the U.N. senior military advisor for the Human Rights Council's (HRC) Independent Commission of Inquiry on Libya, where he investigated civilian casualties while leading a survey of NATO's activities in Libya. He has worked with CNA on civilian harm mitigation, and co-hosts his own podcast, Civilian Protection with CIVIC.
He has been engaged in this Action Plan through his work with the NGO PAX since 2021 and will be talking to us today about the history of this Action Plan and his views on what it might do to address the causal issues identified across the numerous projects that have been analysing the contributing factors that result in civilian casualties.
Edited by Rosie Cavdarski.
Additional Resources
- Marco Garlasco, ‘Defense Department Finally Prioritizes Civilians in Conflict,’ Lawfare Blog (29 August 2022)
- Dan E. Stigall, Anna Williams, ‘An Improved Approach to Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response’ Articles of War Blog (Lieber Institute, Westpoint) (25 August 2022)
- RAND, U.S. Department of Defense Civilian Casualty Policies and Procedures An Independent Assessment (2022)
- See CivIC’s Report ‘In Search of Answers: U.S. Military Investigations and Civilian Harm’ (2020) and other publications on their website.
- Listen to 'The Civilian Protection Podcast' - PAX
- Applying the DoD Policy on Civilian Harm to Protection of Civilians in Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) , NGO Recommendations for DoD Policy on Civilian Harm - InterAction
On 25 Aug 2022, the US Department of Defense released its Civilian Harm and Mitigation Response Plan, which has been created, in part as a result of the public scrutiny on civilian casualty incidents following the Iraq campaign.
In this episode, Dr Lauren Sanders speaks with Marc Garlasco, who has been intimately involved with this issue, having been engaged in stakeholder engagement with the US DoD during their development of this plan when it was announced on 27 Jan 2022.
Marc has a long history of observing and reporting on civilian casualty incidents, using his understanding of the process garnered from his time as a a US intelligence analyst. He has served with HRW, as a senior civilian protection officer for United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA); and as the U.N. senior military advisor for the Human Rights Council's (HRC) Independent Commission of Inquiry on Libya, where he investigated civilian casualties while leading a survey of NATO's activities in Libya. He has worked with CNA on civilian harm mitigation, and co-hosts his own podcast, Civilian Protection with CIVIC.
He has been engaged in this Action Plan through his work with the NGO PAX since 2021 and will be talking to us today about the history of this Action Plan and his views on what it might do to address the causal issues identified across the numerous projects that have been analysing the contributing factors that result in civilian casualties.
Edited by Rosie Cavdarski.
Additional Resources
- Marco Garlasco, ‘Defense Department Finally Prioritizes Civilians in Conflict,’ Lawfare Blog (29 August 2022)
- Dan E. Stigall, Anna Williams, ‘An Improved Approach to Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response’ Articles of War Blog (Lieber Institute, Westpoint) (25 August 2022)
- RAND, U.S. Department of Defense Civilian Casualty Policies and Procedures An Independent Assessment (2022)
- See CivIC’s Report ‘In Search of Answers: U.S. Military Investigations and Civilian Harm’ (2020) and other publications on their website.
- Listen to 'The Civilian Protection Podcast' - PAX
- Applying the DoD Policy on Civilian Harm to Protection of Civilians in Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) , NGO Recommendations for DoD Policy on Civilian Harm - InterAction
Previous Episode
Counting civilian casualties - the impact of perspectives on accountability: Christiane Wilke
In this episode, Dr Lauren Sanders speaks with Professor Christiane Wilke about the problem with accountability following civilian casualty incidents, and the impact of cultural and racial frames in imagining what has occurred on the ground.
Professor Christiane Wilke is an Associate Professor in the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University, Canada. She researches how Western militaries and human rights organizations produce knowledge about and legal analyses of armed conflicts, looking at the recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.
In particular, she works with visual and cultural assessments of civilian casualties from airstrikes and how their assessments are shaped by imperial imaginaries about race and space. Drawing on Third World Approaches to International Law and critical law & technology scholarship, she ask how international law understands, regulates, and privileges technologically enhanced warfare.Additional resources:
- Christiane Wilke: Legal Tragedies: US Military Reporting of Civilian Casualties of Airstrikes, Forthcoming in: Alexandra Moore and James Dawes (editors), Technologies of Human Right Representation (SUNY Press, 2022)
- Christiane Wilke and Mohd Khalid Naseemi, ‘Counting Conflict: Quantifying Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan,’ Forthcoming in: Humanity Journal (Summer 2022).
- Christiane Wilke, ‘The Optics of War: Seeing Civilians, Enacting Distinctions, and Visual Crises in International Law’ in Sheryl Hamilton et al (eds), Sensing Law (Routledge, 2017).
- Learn more about Azmat Khan’s work at her website and read her Pulitzer Prize winning report on The Civilian Casualty Files in The New York Times.
- Learn more about Air Wars on their website.
- Learn more about Pax for Peace on their website.
- Learn more about CIVIC on their website.
- Learn more about the members of Wilke’s civilian casualty collective: Thomas Gregory, Helen Kinsella, Craig Jones and Nisha Shah.
Next Episode
Cultural Heritage and Accountability in Ukraine - Ana Vrodljak and Mayee Warren
This episode starts a series of podcasts analysing accountability in the current Ukrainian conflict.
In this first episode, we are joined by Ana Filipa Vrodljak, the UNESCO Chair on International Law and Cultural Heritage, and Professor of Law at UTS, and Mayee Warren – a senior practitioner in the management of international criminal trials - to talk about the challenges presented in collecting and collating evidence of breaches of international law in Ukraine. In particular, we are going to focus on how the law protects objects of special cultural significance, what accountability measures exist when those objects are damaged in armed conflict, and then talk about how technology can assist in bringing perpetrators of these crimes to account.
Professor Ana Filipa Vrodljak has authored numerous books on International Law and Cultural Objects and Cultural Heritage; as well as the Oxford Commentary on the 1970 UNESCO and 1995 UNIDROIT Conventions. Among her many other appointments, she is a General Editor of the Oxford Commentaries on International Cultural Heritage Law and book series entitled Cultural Heritage Law and Policy; President of the International Cultural Property Society and on the Management Committee, International Journal of Cultural Property.
Mayee Warren has decades of experience as a senior executive in the Office of the Prosecutor of several international judicial mechanisms – from Rwanda, Sierra-Leone. The ICC, the War Crimes Court for Bosnia-Herzegovina, the ECCC – there is barely an international criminal justice mechanism Mayee hasn’t been involved with. She is notionally retired, but is still consulting on legal and judicial projects including Organisational Development Adviser to the Office of the Attorney-General in Somaliland, Organisational Transformation and Change Management Consultant to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions under the joint EU and UN Office on Drugs and Crimes' Criminal Justice Sector Reform program in East Africa and is engaged at UTS with teaching and program management of Global Accountability Projects, as well as providing advise to Ana in her UNESCO role.
Edited by Rosie Cavdarski.
Additional Resources
- Ana Filipa Vrdoljak and Francesco Francioni (eds), The Oxford Handbook of International Cultural Heritage Law (Oxford University Press, 2020).
- Ana Filipa Vrdoljak and Francesco Francioni (eds), Cultural Heritage Law and Policy (Oxford University press, 2013)
- ICC OTP, Lessons Learned Report.
- Read about the ICC OTP’s Policy of Cultural Heritage.
- Learn more about the Mali and Timbuktu prosecutions before the ICC.
- Alexandre Skander Galand, 'A Special Justice Mechanism for the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine – For Who, By Who, Against Who?' Opinio juris (9 May 2022)
- Generally: International Law Blog
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