Casualty Recording in Syria
Innovations
Syrian conflict casualties were among the first to be widely documented through the use of multiple open online sources. As well as news media monitoring, casualty recording organisations such as Airwars, SJAC, SNHR, and others, gathered and verified evidence through a range of social media sites, as well as satellite imagery. Photographs, videos, and witness statements posted online, as well as leaked Syrian authority and Islamic State documents, became invaluable sources of evidence. Casualty recorders based thousands of miles away from the conflict were able to compile information with a speed and level of detail not previously seen. These investigation methods have now become widely used in other conflicts.
International investigations
Over the course of the conflict the international community established two important mechanisms to document, investigate and preserve information on human rights violations and war crimes in Syria. These are the Independent International Commission of Inquiry, established in August 2011 by the UN Human Rights Council, and the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism, established in 2016 by the General Assembly. In 2023, the General Assembly also established the Independent Institution on Missing Persons, mandated to clarify the fate of all missing persons in Syria. Each of these bodies has worked closely with civil society casualty recorders to investigate and compile details of tens of thousands of victims. This information is not routinely made public due to security concerns for survivors. None of these bodies has dedicated financing; they rely on resources from within the UN regular budget.
Obstacles
The Assad regime denied access to international investigators, severely limiting the possibilty of independent documentation of casualties. Many civil society casualty recorders have worked in collaboration with staff or networks of volunteers based inside Syria, but this has been at high personal risk.
Documenting fatalities in Syria has been complicated by the large number of people detained and/or forcibly disappeared by the Assad regime and other parties to the conflict, including Islamic State. Tens of thousands of people have gone missing, with families unable to obtain any news of their fate. Developing comprehensive records of those killed in the conflict will only be possible in conjunction with efforts to discover the fate of missing detainees.
Insights
Due to the multiplicity of casualty recording initiatives, the length of the conflict, and the high death toll, it has been possible to conduct detailed statistical analysis of causes of death and victim demographics in Syria. This analysis has provided insights into the human cost of the conflict as it unfolded, offering a level of detail not normally available until long after the end of a violent conflict.
In 2014, ECC published research identifying the leading causes of child casualties in Syria by combining and analysing casualty records from multiple sources.
Similarly, in 2021, the UN Office of the High Commisioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reviewed records of multiple casualty recorders, and was able to confirm that the death of 350,209 fully identified individuals between March 2011 to March 2021 had been recorded by at least one source. Of these identified fatalities, 143,350 were civilians. OHCHR developed statistical estimates based on these figures which indicated that the total number of civilian deaths over the ten year period was likely to be around 306,887. This broke down to an average of 83 civilian deaths, including 9 women and 18 children, each day.
Impact on military transparency
Casualty records from Syria have been used to push for better protection of civilians and greater accountability by external actors in the conflict, including the Coalition forces led by the USA (which included the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, the UK, France, and Belgium). Casualty recorders such as Airwars have presented detailed documentation of civilian casualties resulting from Coalition air strikes to military investigators, resulting in internal investigations, compensation payments, and ultimately, changes to military procedures. As a result of this work, countries including the Netherlands and the USA have developed new mechanisms and policies on documenting and identifying civilian harm resulting from their military operations.
Legal applications
The high quality of casualty recording in Syria has made it a valuable source of evidence for criminal prosecutions. Civil society casualty recorders such as SJAC have provided evidence to multiple criminal proceedings in Europe taking place under the principle of universal jurisdiction. Following the end of the Assad regime, there will be further opportunities for casualty recorders’ work to be instrumental in criminal prosecutions and transitional justice processes.
Information on individual casualties
Sources of information about people killed in the armed conflict in Syria:
Airwars is a UK-based non-profit organisation which conducts remote open-source investigations on civilian deaths in several armed conflicts worldwide. In 2014 it began documenting civilian deaths caused by air strikes in Syria. It has documented thousands of deaths caused by Israeli, Russian, Turkey and USA-led Coalition forces.
Insight is a Syrian non-profit organisation that records human rights violations, including casualties, that have occurred in Syria since December 2022. Insight relies primarily on media and open source information, which they verify through a network of local contacts across Syria.
SJAC is a Syrian human rights organisation based in the USA. It collects, stores and analyses documentation of human rights violations in Syria, including killings, from all available sources. SJAC works with war crimes investigation units in various European countries as well as the International, Independent and Impartial Mechanism, and regularly provides evidence for prosecutors.
SNHR is an independent organisation registered in the United Kingdom, with staff inside and outside of Syria. SNHR documents the deaths of civilians and combatants across all regions of Syria regardless of ethnicity or political affiliation. SNHR issues daily reports of documented deaths.
VDC-SCM is an independent civil society organisation founded by Syrian activists at the start of the revolution. VDC documents people killed, detained or forcibly disappeared in Syria, regardless of perpetrator. VDC gathers casualty information from its own network of researchers in Syria, witness accounts, medical records and independent journalists. It publishes periodical statistical reports of killings.
