Civilian casualty

A civilian casualty occurs when a

The term "civilian casualties" is sometimes used in non-military situations, for example to distinguish casualties to police vs. to criminals such as bank robbers.

Overview

Generating reliable assessments of casualties of war is a notoriously complex process. Civilian casualties present particular difficulties. One problem is that the attribution of the label 'civilian' is contested in some cases. On the surface, the definition of a civilian, at least in the context of international armed conflicts, is relatively simple: a civilian is any person who is not a member of the armed forces and is not a combatant in situation of armed conflict. To make effective use of such statistics as there are about civilian casualties of war, it is necessary to be explicit about the criteria for inclusion. All too often, there is a lack of clarity about which of the following categories of civilian casualties are included in any given set of figures.[4]

1. Those killed as a direct effect of war;
2. Those injured as a direct effect of war;
3. Those dying, whether during or after a war, from indirect effects of war such as disease, malnutrition and lawlessness, and who would not have been expected to die at such rates from such causes in the absence of the war;
4. Victims of one-sided violence, such as when states slaughter their own citizens in connection with a war;
5. Victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence in connection with a war;
6. Those uprooted in a war – that is,
   Internally Displaced Persons
   (IDPs);
7. Those who, even after a war is over, die prematurely from injuries sustained in war.

The inclusion of people in each of these categories may be defensible, but needs to be explicit. Each category presents its own methodological problems. In the case of people dying from indirect effects (category 3), much careful work is needed to distinguish between 'expected' and 'excess' levels of mortality. In the case of victims of sexual crimes (category 5) there could be an argument for including not only direct crimes by combatants, but also 'indirect' crimes due to general social collapse. In the case of those uprooted in war (category 6), the implication that refugees and IDPs always count as war victims is too simple. Some may be fleeing one-sided violence from a repressive state apparatus, natural calamity, or general social breakdown. Moreover, in certain episodes, such as the

Following World War II, a series of treaties governing the laws of war were adopted starting in 1949. These Geneva Conventions would come into force, in no small part, because of a general reaction against the practices of the Second World War. Although the Fourth Geneva Convention attempted to erect some legal defenses for civilians in international armed conflicts, the bulk of the Fourth Convention devoted to explicating civilian rights in the hands of the enemy, and no explicit attention is paid to the problems of bombardment and the hazardous effects in the combat-zone.^[5]

In 1977, Protocol I was adopted as an amendment to the Geneva Conventions, prohibiting the deliberate or indiscriminate attack of civilians and civilian objects in international armed conflicts; the attacking force must take precautions and steps to spare the lives of civilians and civilian objects as possible.^[6] Although ratified by 173 countries, the only countries that are currently not signatories to Protocol I are the United States, Israel, Iran, Pakistan, India, and Turkey.^[7]

Under international humanitarian law applicable to international armed conflict, enemy civilians and stateless persons or neutral nationals outside the territory of a belligerent state are protected persons under Article 4 of the Fourth Geneva Convention^[8] and the 1907 Fifth and 13th Hague Conventions regarding the duties of neutrals on land and naval warfare.^[9] Only neutral nationals in the territory of a belligerent state (e.g., the taking of U.S. residents in Iraq hostage by Iraqi authorities during the Gulf War before January 17, 1991)^[10] and citizens of an allied state (such as rapes committed by French colonial troops against allied Italian civilians after the Battle of Monte Cassino during World War II) are not protected persons under the laws of war.^[8]

The

Civilian casualty ratio

Main article: Civilian casualty ratio

The civilian casualty ratio in an

armed conflict

is the ratio of civilian casualties to combatant casualties or total casualties. The measurement can apply either to casualties inflicted by a particular belligerent or to casualties in the conflict as a whole.

Collateral damage

Main article: Collateral damage

Collateral damage is defined in terms of armed conflict as unavoidable or accidental killing or injury of

non-combatants or unavoidable or accidental destruction of non-combatant property caused by attacks on legitimate military targets

.

See also

• Casualty recording
• Casualty (person)
• Concentration camps
• List of concentration and internment camps
• Nazi concentration camps
• Wartime sexual violence

References

Further reading

Wikiquote has quotations related to Civilian casualty.

• Counting Civilian Casualties: An Introduction to Recording and Estimating Non-military Deaths in Conflict.
• Twentieth Century Atlas - Death Tolls WAR STATS REDIRECT WAR STATS REDIRECT WAR STATS REDIRECT [1] Twentieth Century Atlas - Death Tolls Twentieth Century Atlas - Death Tolls Twentieth Century Atlas - Death Tolls [2]
• Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres and Atrocities Before the 20th Century
• The world's worst massacres, by Greg Brecht. Fall, 1987. Whole Earth Review.