In April, Airwars and PAX officially launched the Civilian Protection Monitor. This moment was accompanied by the release of our three annual country reports on the US, UK, and the Netherlands respectively, covering developments up until 1 February 2025. The next iteration of these in-depth reports will be published in early 2026 (see our ‘Methodology’ page for more information on our research and publication cycle).
In the meantime, the News section of the CPM website offers occasional analysis of developments in national CHMR approaches as they adapt, progress, or regress throughout the year. The Netherlands saw particularly significant shifts in its approach in March-May 2025. These can serve as an important and much-needed source of good practice as, globally, civilian protection norms and standards are increasingly under threat. At the same time, these also warrant scrutiny as the Netherlands’ approach to CHMR, while increasingly advanced and comprehensive, continues to have some important gaps.
Reform in the aftermath of civilian harm
During a June 2015 military operation, Dutch F-16s bombed a VBIED factory in Hawija, Iraq, which resulted in an immense secondary explosion that killed at least 85 civilians, in addition to causing widespread material damages and many forms of reverberating harm. After Dutch responsibility for this airstrike was revealed in 2019, it has been one of the driving forces for changes in the country’s approach to civilian harm mitigation and response. In the years since, the Netherlands has come to demonstrate leadership both domestically and abroad as, among other things, the Netherlands co-leads the International Contact Group on CHMR: a platform for recurring meetings between policymakers and practitioners from various Western states to exchange on CHMR lessons, best practices, and gaps. In recognition of these advances, as well as the shortcomings that led to the Hawija airstrike, the Netherlands received an overall score on the upper end of ‘Engaged’ in our 2024 report. It scored particularly well – receiving ‘Emerging Leader’ – in the areas of public reporting & transparency, and national policy.
Over five years on from initial reporting on Hawija, this tragedy continues to shape Dutch policy and practice. In 2020, the MoD appointed an independent Commission of Inquiry (CoI), led by Winnie Sorgdrager, to investigate how the strike on Hawija could have resulted in civilian casualties, and to identify lessons for the future. The CoI’s final report substantially informed CPM’s analysis for the Netherlands’ 2024 country report. Since the analytical cut-off point for the CPM report, however, several important developments have taken place; this includes the government’s response to the CoI’s report, including several new policy announcements; an update on a pending investigation into another civilian casualty event likely caused by the Netherlands in Mosul in 2016; and discussions around inconsistent and disorganised MoD data storage practices.
Hawija & the CoI: an impetus for additional Dutch CHMR initiatives
On 14 March this year, Dutch Minister of Defence Brekelmans shared the government’s official response to the CoI’s report by way of a letter to Parliament, which contains various important commitments. For one, Brekelmans reiterated an apology made by his predecessor for misinforming Parliament about the Dutch arms deployment in Hawija and the likelihood that this caused civilian casualties; a practice that the CoI described as having occurred “time and again” in the context of Hawija. The minister also apologised for the harm that was caused in Hawija for the first time, and announced the intent to implement new projects at an estimated cost of 10 million euros to support the community in Hawija. In an important step forward, the apology was offered directly to the mayor of Hawija as a representative of the affected community though survivors of the airstrike asked that the Dutch government visit them to offer these apologies in person.
Looking beyond Hawija, the MoD has announced various steps to improve CHMR practices in future military deployments. In line with previous civil society recommendations, the government has announced its intent to establish sufficient CHMR knowledge as a required qualification for certain military education trajectories, for instance those for targeteers. The minister has further provided additional clarity on MoD’s assessment (‘vooronderzoek’) and investigation (‘intern onderzoek’) procedures when it receives information on possible civilian casualties caused by use of force by the Netherlands’ armed forces, including an accessible diagram on when and how information is shared with Parliament. This can occur confidentially.
In an attempt to safeguard CHMR practices in future coalition settings, the Netherlands has voiced its desire to develop a ‘Letter of Intent’ with the other International Contact Group members, which would contain a list of CHMR-related topics that countries would have to discuss and agree upon before future coalition operations. This can include matters like intelligence sharing, the exchange of information regarding the civilian environment in which operations are conducted, monitoring and reporting of possible civilian harm, and the exploration of coalition standards for compensation mechanisms. Further, to address one of the main grievances noted in the CoI’s report, the government will provide clearer information to Parliament on the Dutch information position (including by clarifying the level of access it will have to intelligence gathered by other nations) in future coalition settings. This is particularly needed because the CoI’s report reiterated that the Netherlands carried out the airstrike on Hawija with minimal access to the intelligence that preceded and informed the attack, which was available only to countries in the Five Eyes intelligence group. The MoD has also committed to further improvements regarding strike approvals, information sharing with the Public Prosecution Service (PPS), and more frequent implementation of its transparency assessments. These are important developments, showing the Netherlands’ commitment to matters related to transparency and civilian harm mitigation, and making it an international CHMR frontrunner.
To strengthen its approach further, there are several steps the Netherlands can and should take. Some recent commitments remain exploratory in nature, with the government describing its ‘intent’ to pursue certain actions instead of setting a clear policy. The ambition to develop a Letter of Intent, for example, is important but does not itself say anything about the quality of agreements and standards that would be contained therein. Nor does it guarantee that such a letter comes into being in the first place, as this is also dependent on the willingness of other countries. Another important case in point is the matter of amends or voluntary compensation: the Netherlands remains ambivalent about setting clear civilian harm response options or standards, choosing instead to determine what form of redress is appropriate on a case-by-case basis. While such a tailor-made approach sounds promising and can lead to meaningful redress in individual cases, overall it risks leaving civilians harmed by Dutch military operations without the form of response that they desire, find meaningful, or that fits their needs. An important case in point is Hawija, where the Netherlands refuses individual-level compensation for many of the people harmed in the 2015 airstrike, despite survivors consistently calling for these as the most meaningful and effective way to address their various needs. In a parliamentary debate on this matter, the minister of Defence argued that such payments would be difficult, if not impossible, to provide more than ten years later, effectively placing the consequences of a years-long refusal to acknowledge responsibility for the strike on the shoulders of those who lost their loved ones, their livelihoods, and their homes.
Mosul & ‘Accountability Day’: investigative improvements
On the same day that the MoD responded to the CoI’s report, it also provided its first detailed update into an ongoing investigation around possible civilian casualties from Dutch operations in Mosul in 2016. NOS and NRC reporting in 2023 alleged that a Dutch airstrike on a residential building had killed seven civilians, including a 3-year-old girl. The MoD is now rounding off this investigation, which included visiting Mosul to do field research and to interview civilian witnesses and survivors of the airstrike, in addition to consulting open source information. While the outcome of the investigation is yet to be reported, and it is therefore not yet clear if survivors will receive compensation from the Dutch government, the investigative methods appear robust and in line with what are widely considered best practices. The PPS, which operates independently from the MoD, has already concluded from its own factual investigation that it is likely that seven civilians were killed in this operation.
The MoD further announced it would now also publicly report on the outcome of assessments of possible civilian casualties caused by Dutch arms deployment on its website on a rolling basis. This will happen across all allegations of harm submitted to the MoD, even when the assessment does not lead to an internal investigation, for instance if the MoD finds that it cannot draw conclusions on the evidence immediately available, or when Dutch involvement in an incident is not considered plausible because it does not match with the dates and locations of Dutch operations.
Additionally, the MoD will annually report on the completed assessments of the previous year on ‘Accountability Day’ (‘Verantwoordingsdag’) 2025. The MoD has already reported on 61 cases from OIR that it assessed for possible civilian casualties from Dutch airstrikes during a year-long process in which it engaged with Airwars. None of these assessments have led to an investigation. While, according to Airwars, in some cases this raises concerns about the type of information available to the MoD on its own operations, and its apparent inability to pursue evidence beyond what is presented in an allegation during the assessment stage, the engagement overall was described as very constructive.
‘Lost’ & found: F16 footage and Dutch archiving practices
One issue that continues to plague the MoD are concerns over its archiving and recordkeeping practices. Regarding its research into the Hawija case, the CoI emphasised that the Ministry’s ability to provide, or its support in providing the CoI team with the necessary documents to complete its task “left much to be desired”. It also expressed dissatisfaction with the MoD’s initial reporting that important footage related to the Hawija airstrike – namely a video recorded by Dutch F16s the morning after the strike – could not be found and was initially considered to have been overwritten. It therefore came as a big surprise when the MoD declared that the footage had been found after all, just a few days after Dutch news outlet De Volkskrant reported on this issue in March. The footage has since been made public and the Minister of Defence has announced an external investigation into the circumstances in which the video was apparently lost for 10 years. This latest incident plays into existing concerns, however, about the degree to which MoD records are effectively and comprehensively being maintained and updated. The CoI report concluded that:
This Commission too, like other commissions that had been commissioned to investigate the process of establishing the truth about calamities, has come across problems such as the failure to preserve essential source material; sloppy archiving or even no archiving at all. Since the end of the analogue era, digital archiving is still not up to scratch. Policies around classified state secrets are also lacking.
The CoI team further adapted some of its conclusions from its initial report, following review of the footage, making these more critical. The MoD has committed to addressing data storage gaps through its ‘Defensie Open op Orde’ programme in its official response to the CoI’s report.
Looking ahead
The Netherlands is showing through its commitments and recent practice that it is intent on setting stronger civilian protection standards, particularly where it concerns investigating and reporting allegations of possible civilian casualties. While its approach remains provisional or fragmented in certain places, the Netherlands is setting a strong example for its international peers and can hopefully inspire its allies in taking similar courses of action.
The Netherlands should now work to address the remaining gaps in its approach. The MoD must also, as a matter of urgency, engage in an effort to maintain a focus on CHMR, even as it moves its focus from the counterinsurgency or counterterrorism operations of the last two decades, to focus instead on the possibility of large-scale warfare. CHMR will be equally if not more important in contexts of large-scale fighting. The Dutch approach to CHMR is so far designed for what the Netherlands calls ‘Article 100 interventions’, aimed at maintaining or promoting the international legal order, often referring to peacekeeping and stabilisation missions. For many of the transparency commitments, it is not clear if they, for instance, would also apply when the Netherlands deploys armed forces in operations under a NATO Article 5 scenario of ‘collective defence’. In a promising move on this, the MoD has recently made a commitment that the Dutch Chief of Defence must explicitly addresses the risk of civilian casualties in its military advice that informs political decision-making on the use of military forces in both missions (Article 100) and operations. As the Netherlands is increasingly preparing for the latter, it should also incorporate CHMR across its preparations, to ensure it upholds civilian protection standards in all circumstances.