By Jessica Garlasco
In 2014, Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) was launched to counter the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria. The US-led campaign claimed victory in countering the territorial gains of ISIS in 2019 as the final territory in Baghuz was reclaimed. Yet as the conflict unfolded across cities and towns, it brought severe and persisting consequences for civilians. Beyond the thousands of deaths caused by ISIS, Airwars estimates that the US-led Coalition alone caused between 8,247 and 13,340 civilian deaths. For those who lost loved family members and friends, their homes, and access to critical infrastructure such as hospitals and schools, the consequences persist to this day.
Many of the states that contributed to the Coalition still do not recognise their role in causing civilian harm – and none recognise the full extent; to date, only 1,457 civilian deaths have been confirmed by the Coalition as a whole. Of those analysed here, only the US, UK, and Netherlands have accepted state responsibility for individual allegations, often in the midst of significant public pressure.
While other conflicts now dominate the headlines and public debate, a continued lack of transparency and accountability for harm during OIR means that those affected are left without critical answers about what happened, leaving them without redress. Public recognition is a key first step in community-based responses to civilian harm, often highlighted as vital by affected civilians alongside an explanation for why the harm occurred, and an apology. One victim of a Dutch airstrike in 2015 that killed at least 70 civilians emphasised the need for recognition, asking the Netherlands to “admit their actions after the strike, confess their mistake and provide financial compensation to the families who lost many shops, homes, people, the injured ones, cars and many more things after that night”.
Beyond the moral requirement to provide such a response, OIR and other wars of the last two decades also provide invaluable lessons on the importance of mitigating harm to civilians – and responding when it occurs. As highlighted in a recent piece by the team behind the Civilian Protection Monitor, these lessons will be as vital in future warfare as they have been in the past.
This briefing provides an update on a 2016 report by Airwars, called “Limited Accountability: A transparency audit of the Coalition air war against so-called Islamic State”. It aims to examine current transparency mechanisms among key former OIR coalition partners, analysing improvements, stalemates, and regressions in militaries’ approaches. The scope of this briefing specifically focuses on transparency mechanisms including the institutionalisation of public and timely release of data on airstrikes, and the processes, criteria, and outcomes of alleged civilian casualty incidents; wider civilian harm mitigation mechanisms, such as operational mitigation and response, are not within the scope of this briefing. All of the states discussed in this briefing have endorsed The Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians from the Humanitarian Consequences Arising from the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas (EWIPA), yet many of these states have gaps in implementing national frameworks which fulfil the commitments of the declaration.
Several of the states examined in this briefing are analysed in more depth in the Civilian Protection Monitor (CPM). Notably, CPM provides a full overview of the civilian harm mitigation and response policies and practices of the US, the UK, and the Dutch militaries, extending beyond their transparency mechanisms to also examine other features, from national policy, to civilian harm tracking mechanisms. We hope to expand CPM in coming months and years to include the other belligerents covered in this briefing and others.
United States
The United States’ approach to civilian harm mitigation and response has been analysed in full by the CPM. You can find the full analysis here.
In the years since Airwars’ 2016 Transparency Audit, the United States made significant structural improvements to its policies and doctrine on civilian harm mitigation and response from its own military actions, leading to an ‘Emerging Leader’ score in the Civilian Protection Monitor’s analysis of the country up to February 1st 2025. Many of these, however, are now being threatened by reforms and budget cuts under the current Trump Administration.
During the OIR campaign, US Central Command (CENTCOM) conducted assessments of allegations of harm for the coalition as a whole. Airwars found that civilian casualties were under-reported by 93 percent at the time of the publication of the 2016 Transparency Audit. By May 2016, CENTCOM had failed to assess over 60 percent of known alleged civilian casualty events in Iraq and Syria; when assessments did occur, they were frequently rushed, inadequately researched, and overly dismissive of credible external sources.
At the beginning of OIR, CENTCOM conceded when US-specific airstrikes caused civilian harm. However, as the number of partners in the Coalition grew, Airwars reported that US-specific strike reporting became less transparent, with individual belligerents no longer identified as responsible for an airstrike.
In the years that followed, several instances of severe civilian harm from US military action were highlighted by media outlets and civil society organisations, including the deadly airstrike against an aid worker and his family during the chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. As a result of the pressure that followed, the US implemented several reforms, culminating in the 2022 Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP) and the Department of Defense Instruction 3000.17 (DOD-I) in late 2023, which “[e]stablishes policy, assigns responsibilities, and provides procedures for civilian harm mitigation and response”. Together, these documents formalised a national framework for implementing CHMR. They marked a significant advancement in transparency around how the US assesses and addresses civilian harm. For example, the DOD-I provides clear guidance on how the United States should report on its investigations, including by instructing military commands to publish quarterly unclassified reports online on the status and results of civilian harm assessments that include incident dates, location, operation type, and an estimate of casualties.
These changes to internal transparency-related CHMR policies are the most substantive of the Coalition partners discussed in this report. However, US practice still falls short of the standards outlined in its own policy documents. Allegations of civilian harm that the US has found to be non-credible have been shown to have significant methodological flaws by Airwars and the New York Times. The gaps in the United States’ transparency for determining the credibility of allegations delays acknowledgement and accountability.
Recent political changes in the United States have led to an alarming revision of DoD priorities and significant budgetary cuts across the Department are impacting the work of programs dedicated to CHMR, including those facilitating transparency. For example, the future of the Civilian Protection Centre of Excellence, which conducts analysis, learning, and training to inform operational planning with civilian harm mitigation best practices, remains uncertain. A renewed focus on increased lethality is occurring in parallel to a significant uptick in civilian harm allegations from US military actions; this year has seen unprecedented reports of single US airstrikes killing over 60 civilians in Yemen in a campaign conducted in coordination with the UK. Airwars found that the US killed almost as many civilians in 52 days under the Trump Administration as in the previous 23 years of US action in Yemen combined. Recent US airstrikes targeting alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean have also widely been criticised as unlawful, raising serious questions about US commitments to CHMR in military practice, and US commitments to international law more broadly.
At the same time, transparency is unequally applied when it comes to CHMR policies in the US’ work with partners and allies. In the 2016 report, Airwars called for US involvement in ad hoc alliances to be conditional on agreed civilian protections. Since then, the US implemented the Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance (CHIRG), a mechanism meant to assess civilian harm resulting from US-origin items. CHIRG was implemented in addition to the pre-existing Leahy law that predates the 2016 report. The CHMR-AP and DOD-I also set expectations for how military partners should mitigate – and report on – civilian harm. For example, the CHMR-AP explicitly establishes a component of DoD policy to “evaluate the ability, willingness, norms, and practices of allies and partners to implement appropriate CHMR practices”. However, both the CHIRG system and the Leahy Laws have been criticised for failing to prevent US support for partners who commit IHL abuses; the future of the CHIRG system now also remains under serious threat from budgetary changes and shifting priorities under the second Trump Administration. The United States has not been transparent about why its institutionalised standards for CHMR have not been equally applied to its continued military support in Israel, or how it assesses allegations of that continued support harming civilians. In fact, US support for Israel has continued in spite of unprecedented, catastrophic levels of civilian harm in Gaza where experts commissioned by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council joined many others in concluding that Israel is committing genocide.
The Civilian Protection Monitor outlines recommendations for how the United States can move towards greater transparency, including the further standardisation of reporting, with military commands providing consistent and detailed strike reports to enable external verification, comprehensive civilian harm reporting that includes a detailed assessment of reverberating harm, and increased transparency on civilian harm assessments describing the full criteria used to determine the credibility of civilian harm reports. These recommendations, while important for future engagements, must also be applied retroactively towards transparency for actions during OIR, as part of the ongoing work of accountability for the campaign.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom’s approach to civilian harm mitigation and response has been analysed in full by the CPM. You can find the full analysis here.
The United Kingdom was the second most active Coalition member after the United States during OIR, claiming to have killed more than 4,000 ISIS militants, but only one civilian from an airstrike in 2018. Due to the apparent lack of a substantiated civilian harm tracking system, poor institutional transparency, and the removal of a system for post-harm response, the Civilian Protection Monitor has designated the United Kingdom as “Uncommitted”.
At the time of the 2016 OIR Transparency Audit, Airwars assessed the United Kingdom as the most transparent active member in terms of reporting on the location, date, and target of airstrikes, with weekly reports published along with information on the aircraft and munitions used. This set an important benchmark for allies on airstrike transparency at a time when some Coalition members did not release consistent public reports on airstrikes during the campaign.
However, while the transparency on strike data reached a good benchmark, the UK lacked transparency regarding its approach, or even the existence of an institutionalised approach, to mitigating, responding to, or reporting on civilian casualties. Until a single civilian casualty was admitted in 2018, the UK had continued to maintain zero civilian casualties in some of the most intense urban combat since World War 2. While not maintaining that no civilians died, the MoD insisted there it did not possess evidence of such casualties. However, there was no public clarification of how this evidence gap would be addressed, or how lessons from allies or independent monitors could be adapted to ensure the UK could understand the harm caused.
When Airwars and The Guardian investigated the single civilian casualty admitted in 2018, they further found significant discrepancies between the UK statement acknowledging civilian harm and findings by the US-led Coalition that there had been no civilian harm in the area on the day specified. Additionally, no local casualty trackers had any report of a civilian casualty on the day in question. In late 2023, Airwars brought the UK government to tribunal after the Ministry of Defence continued to refuse to release basic details about the incident, including information regarding the internal process and assessment for determining the credibility of the incident. This type of information has been released repeatedly by the UK’s allies. Evidence given during the tribunal suggests that the MOD does not have effective oversight of civilian casualties in UK military campaigns, with the senior MoD official in the tribunal unaware of the UK’s standard of proof for investigating civilian harm allegations – or whether such a standard exists – and whether allegations are tracked at a systemic level. In April 2025, the MoD acknowledged in an FOI that it “does not currently have a specific branch tasked solely with assessing and investigating allegations of civilian harm”. The verdict of this tribunal is expected this autumn.
Beyond this incident, there is no transparency in the United Kingdom concerning how the MOD assesses civilian harm. While the UK was one of the first nations to adopt a policy on the Protection of Civilians (first released in 2010 and updated in 2020), which was later followed by the 2021 Joint Service Publication (JSP) 985, this is largely focused on the UK’s role as a peacekeeper, and its tools to protect civilians from the actions of others. There is no clear national policy which contains comprehensive guidance on avoiding, tracking, or responding to harm to civilians specifically from UK military actions, and no clear public information related to how the United Kingdom conducts assessments.
Similar to other countries discussed in this briefing, the UK is engaged in international initiatives on the protections of civilians, including EWIPA as discussed at the beginning of this report. The UK is also an active participant in the International Contact Group, coordinating with allies on good practices in CHMR. Finally, in a very positive step, the MoD is currently conducting a baseline assessment on how human security has been implemented and institutionalised in MOD operations and examining CHMR capabilities, though the findings have not yet been published. It remains unclear to what extent the findings will be shared publicly.
The Civilian Protection Monitor provides recommendations for how the United Kingdom can move towards greater transparency and strengthen its ability to track and assess civilian harm. This importantly includes the institutionalisation of reporting on use of force, building on the benchmark that the MoD set as one of the most transparent states in OIR when it came to reporting strike information. This also includes enhancing transparency in civilian harm reporting, with a transparent policy around how civilian harm is investigated and responded to.
The Netherlands
The Netherland’s approach to civilian harm mitigation and response has been analysed in full by the CPM. You can find the full analysis here.
The Netherlands has made substantial changes since the 2016 Airwars audit, implementing national policy mechanisms to ensure greater transparency around civilian harm mitigation and response. The Civilian Protection Monitor has designated the Netherlands as “Engaged” overall, while designating it an “Emerging Leader” when it comes to CHMR policies and transparency.
When the 2016 Airwars report was released, the Defense Ministry of the Netherlands was considered “among the most secretive of the International Coalition”, with reports of airstrike data being published weekly initially, but becoming more intermittent as the campaign continued. Airwars wrote that attempts by the media and civil society organisations in the Netherlands to obtain information through Freedom of Information requests were routinely rejected.
Unlike many OIR coalition partners, the Netherlands has admitted that its airstrikes killed civilians during the campaign, albeit only in the midst of major investigations and civil society pressure. On June 2nd, 2015, Dutch munitions against an ISIS car bomb factory in Hawijah, Iraq, causing a secondary explosion that killed at least 70 civilians and created immense infrastructure damage to a significant section of the city. While the unexpectedly large explosion from the airstrike was reported up the chain by the pilots involved, and US CENTCOM designated the report of 70 civilian casualties as credible, the Minister of Defence made a statement to parliament that the strike did not cause collateral damage. It was only after four years of significant political and media pressure that the government finally acknowledged civilian harm. In the midst of this pressure, the MoD made promises to parliament for improvements towards transparency and accountability.
Following engagement with a consortium of academic and civil society organisations, the Netherlands established the so-called Roadmap Process in 2019 to expand and strengthen its civilian casualty policies and practices. This Roadmap Process has led to significant improvements in Dutch transparency on civilian harm; a dedicated Protection of Civilians (PoC) unit within the MoD was established and in 2022, the Minister of Defense announced a step-by-step approach to improve the protection of civilians in the Netherlands which included policies such as communicating expected levels of risk to civilians and a benchmark of transparency with parliament before the start of a mission.
External actors continued to apply pressure towards transparency for Dutch civilian harm response. In 2023, an investigation by Dutch media outlets NRC, NOS, and Nieuwsuur alleged that the Dutch Air Force killed at least seven civilians in a 2016 attack on a residential building in Mosul. According to the investigation, US CENTCOM had mistakenly concluded that the strike resulted in no civilian harm in 2017. Following these findings, the Dutch Defense Ministry opened an inquiry into the attack and de-classified information on all 600 airstrikes it carried out in Iraq and Syria as part of OIR, an unprecedented level of transparency by a European partner of the Coalition.
After reconciling the list of 600 airstrikes with their archive of civilian harm, Airwars was able to present a long-list to the Dutch MOD with 61 allegations of civilian harm that happened in a 15km radius and within 24 hours of a Dutch airstrike. Through a uniquely transparent engagement between the MOD and Airwars, Dutch involvement was excluded from 39 incidents of civilian harm. This process also allowed the Dutch MOD to start building a methodology for cross-checking publicly available allegations of harm. The MoD created a dedicated civilian harm reporting mechanism in 2024, allowing civilians and NGOs a systematic approach to submitting allegations. In 22 cases, the Dutch MOD determined that they were unable to determine whether they had caused harm because of insufficient detail on the geographic area or the time of the event.
In late January 2025, the Sorgdrager Commission, which was created in 2020 to examine how the Hawijah airstrike was allowed to happen, published a damning report outlining a series of recommendations for the Dutch government and MOD. In response, the MOD offered, for the first time, an apology for the harm caused from the strike, something repeatedly asked for by the civilians of Hawijah. The MoD’s response also includes significant commitments and/or intentions to provide further transparency on civilian harm assessments and investigations, to include CHMR as a qualification in certain military education trajectories, and to strive for a ‘Letter of Intent’ among future military coalition partners to agree on certain CHMR practices and standards. These are critical steps forward, creating practices for future engagements that can be seen as important benchmarks for other coalition partners.
The MoD launched community compensation efforts between 2021-2023 managed by the International Organisation for Migration and the United Nations Development Programme, focused on reconstructing the infrastructure and the electrical grid in Hawijah. At the time, the response failed to consult local stakeholders, provide individual compensation payments, or issue an apology directly to those harmed. In fact, PAX research later found that the overlap between beneficiaries of the Dutch-funded projects and those directly affected by the airstrike may have been as low as 5-15 percent.
In the aftermath of the Sorgdrager Commission publishing their report, long-lost footage showing crucial evidence filmed by F16s the morning after the Hawijah airstrike suddenly re-appeared. The initial loss of the footage, and the circumstances around its re-appearance were heavily criticised, with the Sorgdrager Commission re-writing certain conclusions to their report in response. The MoD has since made the footage public and announced an external investigation into the circumstances that allowed this important video to be lost for 10 years.
The Roadmap Process and step-by-step approach should be seen as an important step forward for transparency and the ability for civilians to seek redress through the dedicated civilian harm reporting mechanism. The release of all strike coordinates of Dutch airstrikes in 2023 was an important benchmark of transparency, a precedent that should be met by all members of the Coalition.
The Civilian Protection Monitor provides recommendations for how the MoD can continue to implement transparency measures, continuing to fill the remaining gaps in the ongoing Roadmap Process. This includes the implementation of a policy for routinely reporting all civilian casualties, including those caused by coalition partners, and reporting on indirect and reverberating forms of harm. It also includes a recommendation that the MoD publish its criteria for determining the credibility of allegations and the process used to conduct investigations.
France
The third most active member of the Coalition, the French Ministry of Defense’s website on Operation Chammal (France’s contribution to OIR) reports that the country was responsible for 10 percent of aerial missions—conducting 1,570 strikes and destroying 2,400 targets.
During Operation Chammal, France’s reporting on airstrikes was inconsistent. Airwars wrote that in the beginning of the campaign, airstrikes in Iraq were reported within 24 hours with precise locations given, a good level of transparency among the other Coalition partners. However, this eventually moved to less transparent weekly reporting.
Despite its active status within the Coalition, France is one of the countries that has continued to maintain that it did not kill any civilians in its strikes. Airwars’ 2016 report discusses credible evidence that French airstrikes did harm civilians; importantly, it also finds that inconsistent strike transparency may implicate French responsibility for airstrikes by other coalition partners which caused civilian harm.
On April 7, 2024, former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls publicly acknowledged on Radio J France that France contributed to airstrikes during OIR that killed thousands of civilians in Mosul during his time in office (2014–2016). This marked the first public recognition by a senior French official of civilian harm caused by French actions during the campaign. Officially, however, France continues to insist that its airstrikes resulted in zero civilian casualties. Without an official acknowledgement and a continued lack of transparency concerning how these allegations are investigated, France continues to delay accountability and perpetuate harm.
This has implications not only for delayed transparency and accountability from OIR, but also for future French military engagements. For example, in 2021, a UN investigation by the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) found that a French airstrike killed 19 civilians attending a wedding in Bounti. Following the MINUSMA report, the French Ministry of the Armed Forces continued to maintain that the January 3rd airstrike targeted militants. The methodology used to reach this conclusion, and their reasoning for diverging from the findings of MINUSMA, remains unclear.
Internationally, France is an outspoken proponent of protection of civilians in armed conflict and an active member of the United Nations Security Council on resolutions supporting the protections of civilians. Yet in national policy and frameworks, France remains behind the transparency of other nations analysed here, like the Netherlands and the US.
Airwars’ recommendations for French transparency in the 2016 report included two key areas. The first was to return to the original policy of timely, precise strike reporting. The second was to publicly report on all alleged civilian casualty incidents and the findings of their assessments. France’s internal mechanisms for assessing civilian casualties are still not available publicly. The French Ministry of the Armed Forces does not have a reporting mechanism for external parties to address allegations of civilians killed by French airstrikes during overseas operations.
France is not yet monitored in full by CPM.
Belgium
Belgium was consistently considered amongst the least transparent members of the Coalition, with Airwars assessing in 2016 that the country displayed poor levels of transparency and public accountability. Airwars reported that the Belgian military released almost no public statements on specific airstrikes during its campaign with information around Belgian airstrikes only sometimes originating from other coalition partners. In addition to a lack of transparency on airstrike data, Airwars wrote that the Belgian military displayed an unwillingness at the time to work with external organisations to understand the necessity for transparency of airstrike details, claiming that to do so would pose national security concerns. Belgium consistently did not report its strikes separately from Coalition data, making it difficult for external groups to track Belgian actions and highlight potential civilian harm incidents resulting from Belgian airstrikes. The Belgian military has continued to insist that it did not kill civilians during OIR.
In 2017, it was revealed that despite Belgium’s claims of zero civilian casualties, the country was implicated in two civilian harm allegations in Iraq; it appears these airstrikes killed two civilians and wounded four others. These cases were both marked as “credible” by the Coalition, yet Belgium continued to deny responsibility for killing any civilians in either Iraq or Syria.
Airwars noted that Belgian remarks following the credibility assessment of civilian casualties from these two airstrikes implied that only incidents which potentially breached international humanitarian law might be investigated. This implication not only downplays the severity and reality of civilian casualties from airstrikes, whether IHL compliant or not, but also departs from the way assessments are conducted by allies, including the US.
In an open letter in 2021, on the one-year anniversary of the return of Belgium to Operation Inherent Resolve, Airwars, together with a series of Belgian and international organisations, called on Belgium to take concrete steps towards transparency and accountability as the least transparent member of the Coalition. In 2020, the Belgian Parliament adopted Resolution 1298 which called for “maximum transparency” with “prevention, monitoring and reporting of possible civilian casualties” as well as greater public communication and cooperation with external organisations. Yet, this resolution does not seem to have resulted in significant changes to policy or practice.
Given Belgium’s position as one of the least transparent members of the Coalition, the 2016 recommendations for Belgium centered around meeting the baseline of airstrike transparency set out by other members like Canada, the UK, and France. The report noted that indications from other Coalition members have shown that greater transparency does not lead to an operational or national security risk, and that even for smaller nations, it is necessary to identify strike locations and times. The report also called on Belgium to publish any findings of alleged civilian casualty incidents, especially important in light of the “credible” assessment by the Coalition revealed in 2017.
Belgium has not been monitored in full by CPM.
Denmark
At the time of the 2016 report, Airwars wrote that Denmark had “set a new and welcome benchmark for Coalition transparency on civilian casualty reporting” when it announced that a 2015 strike may have been responsible for killing civilians, the first time a partner other than the US had proactively announced a potential civilian casualty event. A joint investigation with CENTCOM concluded that those killed were “likely not civilian casualties.”
However, beyond this incident, the Danish military at first provided only limited information regarding strike locations, dates, and times, and in fact, put pressure on the wider Coalition to limit the reporting of airstrike locations, raising questions about the ability to maintain operational security while simultaneously releasing transparent airstrike information. The idea of operational security necessitating obfuscation around releasing airstrike information is a consistent defense used against transparency in this area, even as other Coalition members, such as the UK, US, and Canada, demonstrated that it is possible to release timely airstrike data. In fact, such transparency can help counter misinformation and reinforce legitimacy.
Denmark has also more recently displayed lack of transparency on its mechanisms around civilian harm assessments. On January 25th 2024, a joint investigation by Altinget, Airwars, and the Guardian revealed that the Danish military had conducted an internal review of an airstrike in Libya in 2011 where they found that two Danish F-16s were connected to airstrikes that killed at least 14 civilians. Despite this, the Danish MOD did not share the findings publicly or with other stakeholders such as parliamentary politicians, the media, and NGO’s who reached out for information on the attacks. The UN Inquiry into Civilian Casualties in Libya specifically asked for information from Denmark about civilians killed in NATO partner airstrikes. Yet, the Danish MoD kept this information hidden. This revelation raises questions about Denmark’s approach to civilian harm reporting with the incident causing some to raise questions about a ‘cover up’ in Copenhagen.
The fact that the Danish Armed Forces was aware of the harm and had conducted an internal review reveals that there are internal mechanisms for assessing civilian harm incidents, yet there is still a lack of transparency on both the methodology used and the outcomes from investigations. As a result, civilians remain cut off from routes for accountability, and the lessons that might be learnt from incidents of civilian harm remain unfound.
Suspicions of civilian casualties involving Danish armed forces are investigated by the Military Prosecution Service, though the methodology used is still unclear. Denmark does comment on their approach publicly in broad terms, with the Defence Minister clarifying for instance in 2015, why it had been decided that those targeted in an airstrike that had raised concerns of civilian harm were likely militants.
Denmark, in theory, has a financial mechanism for compensating civilians with ex-gratia payments. However, it is unclear how those harmed can seek such compensation. There is also still no widely published system allowing civilians to report allegations of harm originating from Danish airstrikes.
In light of the 2024 revelations, Danish political parties have called for a full investigation into the failure to disclose the Libya strike to parliament and relevant international actors, while urging the government to establish a compensation framework for affected civilians. In response, the Danish Minister of Defence Troels Lund Pouls ordered the Danish Armed Forces to commit a formal review of the allegations. It is unclear to what extent the findings will be made public.
Airwars’ 2016 report recommended that Denmark work to improve overall airstrike transparency and public accountability, both of which remained relatively weak throughout the campaign. The lack of transparency revealed in the 2025 investigation point to continued failures in Danish transparency and accountability that have still not been addressed, applying to both OIR and potential future engagements.
Denmark has not been monitored in full by CPM.
Canada
During the Canadian Armed Forces’ kinetic involvement in Operation Inherent Resolve from November 2014 to February 2016, Canada consistently reported the location, target, and date of all its airstrikes in Iraq and Syria; a total of 251 airstrikes during a 15-month campaign. In its 2016 report, Airwars described Canada as “consistently the most publicly accountable member of the Coalition”. This level of transparency is an important standard that should be met by other coalition partners.
While Canada set an important baseline precedent concerning strike transparency, Airwars noted in its 2016 report that there was a lack of transparency by the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) when it came to its internal civilian casualty monitoring processes, and that its analysis should more thoroughly engage credible external civilian and open source information.
The steps taken by the United States through the implementation of the CHMR-AP and DOD-I make even more apparent the gaps that remain in Canada’s transparency on civilian harm assessments. A Just Security article in 2022 noted that “there is a dearth of publicly available information on the guidance, policies, processes or tools” used by the Canadian Armed Forces to implement civilian protections in military operations. This includes a lack of information on the CAF’s methodology for assessing possible civilian casualties and a lack of a clear mechanism for civil society groups or affected individuals to report civilian harm allegations.
To this day, the Canadian government has not taken responsibility for killing any civilians during the operation, despite previous allegations of Iraqi civilians killed in Canadian airstrikes. An internal Pentagon document revealed an allegation that a Canadian airstrike killed between 6 and 27 civilians in Iraq in January of 2015. The Canadian Armed Forces insisted an internal investigation, which reviewed video and strike records, found “no evidence of civilian casualties”, however, there is still a lack of clear transparency and understanding of the CAF’s methodology for assessing this claim.
Airwars’ 2016 report recommended that Canada examine its internal civilian casualty monitoring process, given that high quality and credible assessments are produced on the battlefield from the perspective of affected civilians. This gap of clear policies and mechanisms at the national level undermines Canada’s political position as an advocate for civilian protections.
Canada has not been monitored in full by CPM.
Conclusion
It has been over ten years since the initiation of Operation Inherent Resolve. While some states, like the Netherlands and the United States have made significant improvements to internal transparency mechanisms concerning airstrike transparency and CHMR, these remain at risk of changing political interests, particularly in the US. Many more of the states analysed in this piece (the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Denmark, and Canada) have plateaued, with many continuing to maintain zero civilian casualties from their actions in Iraq and Syria, and many failing to implement national frameworks on civilian harm transparency. Concerningly, the changes in the priorities of some states to move away from the improvements in national frameworks leave questions for the future of transparency for actions during OIR.
While this report highlights the varying levels of transparency among these seven Coalition partners, it is important to emphasise that transparency is not the same as accountability. Efforts by countries like the United States and the Netherlands to publish information are valuable and set an important example for others to follow. However, transparency should be viewed as only one step in a broader process of accountability—one that enables states to recognise and address harm, learn from past operations, and implement meaningful changes to prevent future civilian casualties. Publishing details such as strike locations, timings, and civilian harm assessments enables independent monitoring by civil society organisations—an essential component in holding states accountable and ensuring compliance with obligations to protect civilians.