New Democratic legislation introduced to both the House and Senate seeks big changes to how the United States military works to prevent and report civilian harm caused by its operations, improving overall transparency.
This would take the form of two bills, the new Department of Defense Civilian Harm Transparency Act and a new version of the Protection of Civilians in Military Operations Act. The latter was originally introduced by U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) in 2020. Backed by 18 human rights groups, veteran’s organizations and think tanks, both would seek to emphasize the unacceptable nature of innocent civilian deaths in war and work to prevent and investigate the occurrence of such incidents.
“The bicameral legislation that my colleagues and I are introducing builds from reforms that Secretary Austin has already asked DoD to consider, will put significant guardrails and transparency requirements in place, and establish a much-needed focal point in the government to investigate, report, and prevent civilian harm,” Warren said.
Warren further described the obligations alluded to in these bills as moral ones – a conclusion backed by Khanna, in reference to drone strikes in the Afghanistan war.
“You can’t look at the faces of the seven children killed in the August 29th Kabul drone strike and not act on our moral imperative to protect the lives of children and other civilians in U.S. military operations,” Khanna said.
The reintroduced Protection of Civilians in Military Operation Act would:
- Require investigations into civilian harm be conducted by entities outside the immediate chain of command of those responsible and include interviews with civilian survivors, witnesses and civil society;
- Require each U.S. combatant command to coordinate and communicate with the Department of State regarding any country facing U.S. military operations;
- Create a public database to preserve and organize reports on assessments and investigations of civilian harm;
- Provide $5 million to embed personnel dedicated to overseeing, analyzing and reporting on civilian harm incidents;
- Create a DoD Center of Excellence for the Protection of Civilians to work as an advisor on best practices, while also authorizing $25 million for inclusion of a general officer, analysts and investigators overseen by the center’s civilian director;
- Demand a DoD report on the distinction between combatants and civilians;
- Require the Secretary of Defense to contract with a federally funded research and development center to publish how the department made those distinctions in military operations since 2001.
Separately, the DoD Civilian Harm Transparency Act would focus on civilian harm reporting expansion and greater public transparency. In this regard, it would modify the annual report on civilian casualties from U.S. military operations and designate a senior official within the department to serve as a civilian harm investigation coordinator. The Secretary of Defense would then need to make an expanded annual report on civilian harm with new requirements and more information.
In addition to Warren and Khanna, these efforts were co-sponsored by U.S. Reps. Jason Crow (D-CO), Sara Jacobs (D-CA) and Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), as well as U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
“Civilian casualties are a moral stain on our military operations and are counterproductive to our security goals,” Jacobs said. “When we kill civilians, we’re not only taking innocent life, we’re recruiting another generation to take up arms against us. As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I have been incredibly frustrated by a lack of transparency and a lack of accountability at the Pentagon on civilian casualties. The process is broken and we need major reforms.”