Aegis Trust

Imagine if Google Earth had existed in the 1930s and we could see Stalin's Gulag or Nazi concentration camps (I'm deliberately referring to concentration camps, not the death camps like Belzec).

These satellite photos of the North Korean gulag have been publicly available for years - with almost no public coverage.  They're part of the estimable US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea's report:   The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps Prisoners’ Testimonies and Satellite Photographs.

I was reminded of the report by this new Google Earth project North Korea Uncovered (this is a Google Earth layer - which requires you to download Google Earth).  There are a reported 200,000 political prisoners lost in the Gulag - a slow burning crime against humanity which makes some other, widely reported, atrocities pale in comparison.

This month a tapestry of Picasso's Guernica arrives in London.

Since it was painted, it has served as a visual shorthand for the pain of war, and in particular, the terror felt by civilians under aerial bombardment.

The hanging is normally on show at the United Nations - but, if you're quick, you can see it at the newly re-opened Whitechapel Gallery, London.

If you can't make it to London, there is an excellent dissection by Gijs van Hensbergen of the main elements of the painting - the bull, the head, the three women, the mother and child and the wounded horse- on BBC News Online.

The Dirty War Index is a new analytical tool which calculates rates of 'dirty' war outcomes. Researchers and DWI architects Madelyn Hsiao-Ricks (KCL) and Michael Spagat (Royal Holloway) propose that the DWI tool be used to document, analyze and prevent harmful effects of armed conflicts on populations.

'Dirty' War Outcomes (DWOs) are either prohibited (e.g. torture) or highly undesirable (e.g. deaths of children and civilians). A high DWI value means that a population has experiences lots of 'dirty' combat outcomes. The DWI value (a percentage ratio) is calculated as follows:

A DWI  value which is greater than 0 for prohibited outcomes is unacceptable (illegal). A DWI value which is greater than 0 for highly undesirable outcomes is less clearly defined in law, as providing combatants have adhered to principles of distinction and proportionality, these outcomes are not prohibited.

The DWI explicitly links DWOs to International Humanitarian Law. For example, the DWI rating the destruction of "infrastructure essential for civilian survival (e.g. food, water sources, hospitals) is taken from the pertinent law of war- the Geneva Convention and APs I + II. This rating is calculated thus:

A real life example is cited in Eastern Myanmar. Using evidence that the Tatmadaw (military) stole food from or destroyed food in 472 of 1813 surveyed households, the DWI rating shows that this contravention of the laws of war was perpetrated in 26% of cases. This rating is greater than 0% and thus unacceptable.

The DWI's strengths: what opportunities does it present?

• Ease of comparison:DWI produces a ratio rather than absolute number of DWOs, which enables comparison between conflicts of different sizes, durations, dates and political contexts.
• The DWI reveals a lot about combatant strategy. For example, if there are very high rates of civilian versus combatant mortality, or there are high rates of civilian harm by methods that are inherently targeted (e.g. machete, handgun) this might show that in actual fact combatants are targeting civilians, and not adhering to the principles of distinction or proportionality.
• Highly customisable: the DWI can be applied to any set of data, provided that data meets particular criteria. For example, the rate of dirty outcomes for different varieties of weapon can be be compared, as can the conduct of different parties to the conflict.
• New cognitive framework for conflict analysis: the DWI focuses not on jus ad bellum (whether a war is just) but jus in bello (whether a conflict is conducted according to the laws of war). This is important because the moral and political arguments justifying or condemning conflicts can overshadow considerations of their humanitarian impact and its minimization.

The DWI's weaknesses and omissions

• Spagat and Hsiao Ricks suggest the DWI could also have a preventive effect, inhibiting the actions of conflict parties fearful of being labeled 'dirty' combatants. However, if DWI did indeed become an influencing factor on combatant conduct, far from being reformative - it could have a perverse effect. For example, using children as human shields would increase an opponent's DWI rating relating to child mortality.
• As with any quantitative analysis tool, the DWI relies on access to datasets that are valid, accurate and comprehensive. The difficulty of securing data of this quality in conflict situations is not to be overlooked. Spagat and Hsia-Rei Hicks acknowledge that DWOs such as war-related rape are normally unreported: however, they argue that it will be uniformly unreported, still allowing comparisons for different groups. Thus assumption highlights an essential problem with the DWI: it is based, in part, on knowing the total number of cases, which is ultimately very hard.

How is the DWI related to Aegis' work?

In revealing initial patterns and strategies within conflicts which may belie incidence of war crimes the DWI can help identify areas for future work and research. 

 

DWI paper |  Nathan Taback's critique | Egbert Sondorp's critique