A new report from Oxford Research Group

Read the full report here. This new report from our colleagues at ORG looks closely at how the United Nations records civilian casualty provides valuable analysis, including a case study on Afghanistan.

According to ORG's website:

This report from the Every Casualty programme explores the current state of casualty recording practice and the use of information about casualties within the UN.

It concludes that when the UN systematically records the direct civilian casualties of violent conflict, and acts effectively on this information, this can help save civilian lives. However, casualty recording is not currently a widespread practice within the UN system.

The report recommends that the advancement of casualty-recording practice by the UN in conflict-affected countries should be pursued, as this would have clear benefits to the work of a range of UN entities, and so to the people that they serve.

This report looks at experiences of, and attitudes towards, casualty recording from the perspectives of UN staff based in New York and Geneva that we interviewed. It includes a case study of UN civilian casualty recording by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan’s Human Rights unit. Finally, the report discusses challenges to UN casualty recording, and how these might be met.