Counting Civilian Casualties: An Introduction to Recording and Estimating Nonmilitary Deaths in Conflict
Taylor B. Seybolt, Jay D. Aronson, and Baruch Fischhoff
Abstract
Over the past century and a half, civilians in war have gone from having no particular rights to having legal protections that begin to rival those accorded to states. Counting Civilian Casualties explores the range of methods of casualty recording and estimation, including direct recording, statistical sampling and estimation, and creating records of individual civilian deaths. The contributors discuss each method’s advantages and disadvantages, relate them to conflict and peacebuilding, and analyze how their results can be used (and misused) by governments, combatants, human rights advocates ... More
Over the past century and a half, civilians in war have gone from having no particular rights to having legal protections that begin to rival those accorded to states. Counting Civilian Casualties explores the range of methods of casualty recording and estimation, including direct recording, statistical sampling and estimation, and creating records of individual civilian deaths. The contributors discuss each method’s advantages and disadvantages, relate them to conflict and peacebuilding, and analyze how their results can be used (and misused) by governments, combatants, human rights advocates, war crimes tribunals, and others. The editors conclude the volume with a call for a for an international convention on recording civilian casualties in times of war, to be supported by the scientific and material resources needed to conduct the work with the quality and the dignity that it deserves. These critical expositions are a valuable resource for policymakers, military officials, journalists, human rights activists, courts, and ordinary people who want to be more informed—and skeptical—consumers of casualty counts.
Keywords:
civilian,
casualties,
methodology,
recording,
estimation,
war,
peacebuilding,
violence,
Iraq,
Cambodia,
Bosnia,
Timor,
Peru,
Kosovo,
Burundi,
Sierra Leone
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2013 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199977307 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2013 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977307.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Taylor B. Seybolt, editor
University of Pittsburgh
Jay D. Aronson, editor
Carnegie Mellon University
Baruch Fischhoff, editor
Carnegie Mellon University
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