Civilian Harm

The summer of 2017 was an extended nightmare for the Badrans. Over the course of several weeks, 39 members of Rasha Badran’s family, most of them women and children, were killed…

The U.S. military acknowledges it unintentionally killed 40 civilians in a 2017 air strike, but rejects appeals to help those who survived.

The payments are among the only ways the U.S. military acknowledges and responds to civilian deaths or injuries in its operations, and previous reporting exposed significant gaps…

Without mandatory reporting on condolence payments in the National Defense Authorization Act, Congress—and the public—may remain in the dark about whether and how the Defense…

New information from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) reveals a previously unrecognized transparency gap in the U.S. military’s efforts to acknowledge and address civilian…

The new National Defense Authorization Act can help improve the way the U.S. responds to civilian casualties. FOIA requests and interviews with DoD officials, U.S. soldiers, judge…

A new Haitian cholera vaccination program. Image by UN/MINUSTAH/Logan Abassi In this post, we’re trying something attempted once before at Just Security. Below, we present an…

This post is the latest installment of our “Monday Reflections” feature, in which a different Just Security editor examines the big stories from the previous week or looks…

As a former judge advocate of the U.S. Army who served as a claims officer in Iraq for 14 months, I strongly support the new statute that allows for payments to be offered to civilian…

Earlier this month, Just Security published a guest post by Sahr Muhammedally outlining a new congressional statute whereby the Defense Department can now move ahead in establishing…

When the US military was deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, it had no plan for addressing civilian casualties despite following rules prohibiting disproportionate or deliberate…