Thread by @airwars

Our incoming director @Emily_4319 addresses the #EWIPA delegations on the final day of this round of consultations

Underpinning these negotiations is an international acknowledgement that we must move beyond a status quo where 'collateral damage' is an accepted and inevitable consequence of modern conflict, without a critical understanding of what this means for those civilians on the ground.

We have also heard throughout these negotiations a call for a declaration that is “realistic”; But with a lack of a shared mechanism for tracking and monitoring the civilian harm from military action, how can we know what the reality is?

This is a point that the declaration should clearly address. Yet, as emphasized by several others, a commitment to tracking civilian harm is currently missing from the operative section of the text.

Although it is mentioned within the Preamble, there is no explicit requirement for states and their armed forces to track civilian harm in realtime during military operations,to collect data on civilian harm,or systematically to collect information on damage to civilian objects.

As we also heard yesterday, states have pushed for including ever more equivocal language in section 4.2 - this makes it even more critical that states include an additional commitment ...

.. as per Section 3.4 bis to - and we quote - “establish capabilities to track, analyse, respond to and learn from incidents of civilian harm in real-time, including damage to civilian objects.”

Civil society groups such as ours have shown that it is possible to collect this data: and with it, we can demonstrate a clear and compelling link between civilian harm and population density.

For example; a link between incidents of civilian harm and longer term humanitarian needs, and - ultimately - we can use that data to demonstrate a central point –

Adherence to IHL - while critical in minimising civilian casualties - is, in and of itself, not sufficient to mitigate significant civilian harm during urban fighting where wide area effect explosive weapons are being used.