Conflicting Truth
Airwars commemorates civilians killed in conflict for UN Protection of Civilians week.
Here you will find our own research output and a variety of other thematically relevant publications, blogs, events and podcasts we have been inspired by in our investigations into the Intimacies of Remote Warfare.
Remote warfare is only remote for some. While politicians portray it as humanitarian, so-called ‘precision’ airstrikes often lead to mass civilian casualties. The distance at which this type of war is waged and the inaccessibility of its battlefields often leads to these casualties being overlooked. In recent years, however, a growing community of NGOs have utilised remote-sensing techniques to monitor local claims of civilian harm. The resulting contestation of the exact numbers of civilian casualties has provoked intense debate. This raises pressing questions about the impact of the violence executed and democratic control.
Lauren Gould on NPO Radio 1
Project Leader Lauren Gould is interviewed on NPO Radio 1 about transparency and civilian harm in Dutch military actions.
Op-ed: Ignorance in war is not an excuse
The Dutch Ministry of Defence claim that they cannot know how many civilian casualties occur in their remote wars to evade accountability and public outcry. This is what Lauren Gould en Nora Stel write in their Dutch op-ed for the NRC.
Hawija Case: NGOs are unsatisfied with the quality of the Dutch Ministry of Defence aerial attack data
Unfortunately both the form and content of the data that is now published by the Dutch Ministry of Defence is not what is needed to be able to excersise democratic control, state Airwars Stichting, PAX and the The Intimacies of Remote Warfare-programma.
If you want to know the impact of Dutch bombs on Syria, ask the refugees here
Lennart Hofman and Marrit Woudwijk explore the ‘lesser truth’ of the remote warfare waged by the Netherlands in Syria, as interpreted by Syrian refugees in the Netherlands.
Research report: ‘The Lesser Truth’
Research report from Marrit Woudwijk on truth construction surrounding remote warfare and the case of the US-led Anti-ISIS Coalition in Syria
Visions of Peace Thesis Prize Award 2019 & War/Truth
Seminar on Civilian Harm in Remote Warfare, held 6th December 2019
How a Dutch Bomb killed 70 people in Iraq
NRC Daily Podcast interview with journalists Kees Versteeg and Jannie Schippers discussing the Hawija airstrike.
For Sama
A powerful record of civilian harm in the Battle of Aleppo
Remote Warfare: Remote Justice?
An assemblage approach is taken to understand how and why the members of European Forum on Drones act in dynamic alliances of states, institutions, organisations, groups, expert individuals, discourses, treaties, laws and regulations to govern the use of armed drones