The British government’s secrecy around how it tracks civilian deaths in UK military campaigns risks undermining public confidence in the process, a tribunal has found.
The UK has no published guidelines for how it reviews and assesses allegations that civilians have been killed or injured in an attack, unlike its closest ally, the US.
The ruling was made in response to a freedom of information case brought by the conflict monitor Airwars, as part of an investigation into the UK’s record in its bombing campaign against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
The US, which led the coalition of countries providing air support in the war on IS, has admitted killing more than 1,400 civilians with its strikes.
Airwars had sought more information about the single civilian death acknowledged by the UK. The British government said in May 2018 that one civilian was killed by a strike that targeted three fighters in eastern Syria earlier that year, but the strike was not logged in the records of civilian casualties kept by the US-led coalition and did not appear in a UK list of attacks that killed militants. Syrian human rights groups had no record of a civilian killed in that area on that day.
The judge ruled against Airwars, based on national security considerations that were presented in closed court and therefore excluded from the ruling. However, he also found British voters had a legitimate interest in the “nature, comprehensiveness and robustness” of procedures to assess harm. “The absence of any published procedure at all has the potential to undermine public confidence as to its integrity and comprehensiveness,” the ruling said.
“While there is no reason to doubt the good faith and competence of everyone involved, high-level assurances do not provide the same confidence as a published procedure that can be scrutinised.”
The lack of public information about this process increased public interest in information about the strike Airwars was investigating, the judgment said.
UK politicians had the final say on whether to accept an assessment that British forces killed civilians, a Ministry of Defence official told the tribunal. In the US a dedicated “civilian harm assessment cell” makes that judgment.
Airwars said the ruling was a landmark validation of the need for greater transparency about civilian harm in UK military campaigns. “The judge has ruled that the British public have a right to know when civilians are killed in our names,” said the Airwars director Emily Tripp.
“While we may not have got the documents we were asking for, this tribunal verdict is important official recognition of the damaging effect the UK’s lack of public civilian harm policies has – for the British public, for the military and for civilians.”
