Community Response to the Use of Explosive Weapons in Syria

Local organisations, such as the White Helmets (also known as Syria Civil Defence), collect and report on data that provides insights into the civilian impact of the use of explosive weapons in populated areas impacted by protracted crises, such as the escalation of military attacks in Syria in 2023 following two powerful earthquakes that devastated the region. This article presents data on civilian harm from these attacks from a joint activity between the White Helmets and casualty monitoring group Airwars. It asks how states that have endorsed the Political Declaration can better integrate information, lessons and insights from local organisations to support the implementation of the Declaration’s commitments. 

Introduction

On 6 February 2023, two earthquakes devastated parts of Turkey and northern Syria, killing more than 55,000 people. In Syria, the Red Cross estimated that eight million people were directly impacted by the earthquake - with thousands displaced more than a year on from the disaster.ⁱ A significant international response was mobilised, with the United Kingdom-based Disaster Emergency Committee, for example, raising £150 million through a national appeal alone.ⁱⁱ 

Though as the world’s attention moved on, civilians in Syria have had little respite to be able to recover. In the weeks and months after the earthquake, Syrian forces, together with Russian allies, escalated their military operations, with hundreds of attacks recorded on homes, health facilities, schools, roads and places of worship. Syrian first responders, the White Helmets, recorded more than a hundred civilian fatalities, including 50 children in 2023 alone. 

This article brings together unique data on civilian harm gathered by the White Helmets across northwest Syria, presented as part of a new joint activity with the casualty monitoring group Airwars. Reflecting on the Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians from the Humanitarian Consequences Arising from the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas, this piece will place these findings within the broader commitments under the Declaration. It will raise questions about endorsing states’ own practices for collecting similar data in areas of conflict, and share lessons learned from local grassroots efforts that could support the implementation of the Declaration’s commitments.

Emergency response efforts

In northwest Syria, the White Helmets, also known as Syria Civil Defence, are the largest provider of emergency services in lieu of a functioning government. Emergency search and rescue, ambulance and firefighting services are led by this grassroots movement of over 3,000 volunteers from across all parts of Syria. For ten years, White Helmets volunteers have been responding to military attacks, rushing through ongoing airstrikes, barrel bombs, artillery shelling, and chemical attacks, to save civilians trapped under the rubble. 

In the wake of the February 2023 earthquakes, the White Helmets used the skills and equipment developed to save civilian lives after military attacks to rescue 2,950 people with no support from the international response teams sent to Türkiye or regime-controlled areas of Syria. Over the next four months, their volunteers painstakingly surveyed destroyed buildings for the remnants of unexploded ordinances before clearing roughly half a million cubic metres of rubble – enough to fill 160 Olympic swimming pools. They recycled rubble to repair roads and prepare ground for new camps for displaced people, rehabilitated schools, health facilities, places of worship and critical infrastructure for water, sewage and electricity, all of which were destroyed by the earthquake and degraded by over a decade of war.

While the earthquake response focused on rehabilitation and international attention moved on, military attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure only escalated. According to the White Helmets’ incident response data, attacks on civilians across northwest Syria in 2023 increased by 60% compared to the previous year.ⁱⁱⁱ  

Combining earthquake intensity data with incident response data revealed that civilians were often killed in areas where the February 2023 earthquake had been the most intense.^iv In the months following the earthquake, the White Helmets responded to 1,245 attacks using explosive weapons, leading to at least 167 civilian fatalities – a third of which were children. More than 80 percent of those fatalities were in locations where the earthquake had some of the most intense shocks in Syria.^v Among the fatalities were at least 94 men, 23 women and 50 children.^vi

Civilian fatalities from military attacks during 2023 in areas impacted by the earthquakes

According to White Helmets first responders, the Syrian Regime and Russian Forces were likely responsible for the most civilian fatalities in earthquake-hit areas during this period, with a significant escalation in October that hit homes, schools, places of worship, healthcare facilities and main roads.^vii 

Throughout the year, artillery shelling by Syrian Regime forces led to the highest number of incidents in which civilians were killed, with the White Helmets recording more than 900 separate attacks using artillery on earthquake-affected areas. One White Helmets volunteer was killed in a strike with a guided missile on a marked service vehicle, while three other volunteer responders were injured across separate attacks.  

The United States armed forces were also responsible for at least one drone strike in the months following the earthquake, in an attack now declared a ‘mistake’ by US forces after a civilian farmer was incorrectly identified as a member of Al Qaeda.^viii

The entirety of Syria has become normalised as a battleground for numerous states with little information or tracking on the impact attacks have on the lives of civilians living there, a trend that has only continued in 2024. Alongside Russian, Syrian Regime and US forces, Airwars has also recorded likely civilian harm in the last year from Turkish forces, the Syrian Democratic Forces and from Israeli strikes.^ix 

Despite the devastating impact of the earthquakes, particularly in northwest Syria, civilians continue to absorb the daily trauma of living under the threat of explosive weapons.  

Data collection in areas of conflict

These findings provide significant insight and context on the ways in which civilians are harmed by the use of explosive weapons, particularly as a cumulative factor, layered over protracted challenges such as natural disasters. The Political Declaration affirms the importance of datasets like this one, outlining:

“…improved data on civilian harm would help to inform policies designed to avoid, and in any event minimize, civilian harm; aid efforts to investigate harm to civilians; support efforts to determine or establish accountability, and enhance lessons learned processes in armed forces.” (P1.8)

But would signatory states be able to collect this type of data themselves? And what role do states have when it comes to supporting independent efforts of civil society groups to also do so? 

The findings on civilian harm from explosive weapons following the earthquake has been revealed only as a result of independent casualty recording efforts, led by local citizens. Each datapoint, including the likely perpetrator, weapon type and civilian toll was collected by White Helmets volunteer first responders, who make some of this information publicly available in real time as they carry out lifesaving emergency responses. This documentary evidence joins tens of thousands of pieces of open source content digitally preserved and identified by organisations like civilian casualty monitor Airwars in Syria for the last decade. Each piece of content is typically produced by local citizens – like the volunteers working for the White Helmets – as well as other individuals, such as relatives and friends of those killed by explosive weapons.

From Syria to Gaza to Sudan to Ukraine, local citizens are increasingly well equipped to document the world around them, even in the most challenging of information environments. States and militaries, on the other hand, including many endorsing states of the Political Declaration, have not invested in their own systems or developed policies or practices to account for the civilian toll of war. 

In a recent report by the United Nations Office for Human Rights, the UN High Commissioner called on states to “bolster political, logistical and financial support for independent casualty recording work,” while also recommending that states “ensure that casualty tracking systems are in place” and that casualty recording systems include mechanisms for publicly reporting on those casualties. As the report notes, “the effectiveness and impact of casualty recording work ultimately depends on cooperation with the armed and other actors causing harm.”^x

Data collection commitments under the Political Declaration come within this context, with paragraph 4.2 committing states to:

“Collect, share, and make publicly available disaggregated data on the direct and indirect effects on civilians and civilian objects of military operations involving the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, where feasible and appropriate” (P4.2). 

Civil society organisations have a long history of collecting and making publicly available casualty data even when, as in the case of the White Helmets, data collectors are also carrying out lifesaving activities and working at significant personal risk.

Militaries on the other hand have relied almost exclusively on ‘battle damage assessments’, an information gathering approach often focused on whether or not an intended target was hit, and not the civilian toll of a specific action. In an expert military practitioner workshop held by Airwars and Article 36 looking into the implementation of the Political Declaration, participants acknowledged the limitations of the existing practice when it comes to understanding civilian harm, noting that methodologies often relied upon aerial monitoring which cannot penetrate the rubble of buildings, for example, where civilians are often trapped.^xi A similar workshop convened by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) noted that integration of civilian harm into existing data collection practices would require a “mindset shift” among militaries.^xii

Equally, militaries rarely publicly report on the civilian toll of their actions. The United Kingdom, for example, still maintains its position that it killed just one civilian in the war against ISIS, despite admitting to killing more than 4,000 ISIS militants and playing a significant role in decimating densely populated cities like Raqqa and Mosul in deadly campaigns.^xiii The United States, though it ultimately admitted to its mistake in the strike against civilian farmer Lufti Masto in May, only did so following extensive international media coverage of the incident, including evidence from the White Helmets.^xiv

Continued limitations in existing state practices to admit to or proactively investigate civilian harm sits at odds with the commitments to civilian harm tracking in the Declaration. For the Declaration to be implemented in a meaningful way, this core issue must be addressed by endorsing states.

Lessons from local practitioners

The earthquake rubble may have been cleared but life for civilians has barely recovered a sense of normalcy. Funding to the humanitarian response reached its lowest level this year since the conflict began. The White Helmets continue to document the use of explosive weapons in populated areas daily. 

Work around the Political Declaration provides a space to link up with local organisations and hear firsthand accounts of the impact of explosive weapons. Such partnerships would also provide opportunities to go beyond casualty recording. Endorsing states cannot forget that people are not numbers. Good data is also the basis for accountability and for ensuring that victims’ narratives are recorded and believed.

There is a wealth of information about the human cost of war in many of today’s conflicts. Whether this comes from first responders, like those in Syria, or from local individuals, there are essential voices in conflict who are readily documenting civilian casualties in war. But the potential for this information to advance the protection of civilians from the use of explosive weapons can only be understood when states acknowledge civilian voices as critical to this story. 

Civil society organisations have shown repeatedly that it is possible to filter through even the most complex and contested of spaces in order to identify key events and better understand the impact of military operations for civilians. Learning from tools such as the Standards on Casualty Recording,^xv or taking lessons from the human rights field such as the Berkeley Protocol,^xvi states will find that there are many ways to make sense of often chaotic information spaces. This only works, however, if the assumption is that civilians and local civil society organisations are included as key partners in monitoring and mitigating civilian harm.