Civilian casualty ratio

Globally, the civilian casualty ratio often hovers around 50%. It is sometimes stated that 90% of victims of modern wars are civilians,^[12] but that is a myth.^[2][4]

In 1989, William Eckhardt studied casualties of conflicts from 1700 to 1987 and found that "the civilian percentage share of war-related deaths remained at about 50% from century to century."^[3] He noted the civilian casualty ratio remained consisted despite the fact that number of deaths from wars increased four times faster than the increase in world population, when comparing the 18th century to the 20th century.^[3]

In 1999, the International Committee of the Red Cross estimated that between 30 and 65% of conflict casualties were civilians.^[1] The 2005 Human Security Report noted that the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) indicated, in 2002, that 30–60% of fatalities from conflicts were civilians.^[2]

The "Cities and Armed Conflict Events (CACE)" database of the UCDP provides death counts for all urban conflicts between 1989 and 2017. According to the CACE, in urban conflicts (defined as all cities with a population > 100,000^[13]): 28.9% of deaths are civilians, 29.5% are combatants, and 41.628% are unknown.^[11] If excluding unknowns, then civilian casualties make up 49.5% of all fatalities in warfare in cities. If the data is limited to cities with population >750,000,^[13] then 29.8% of deaths are civilians, 15.3% are combatants, and 54.9% are unknown. If excluding unknowns, then civilian casualties make up 66.1% of all fatalities in warfare in large cities.^[11]

During the 1990s, an argument arose that civilian casualty ratio had dramatically increased. The argument stated that, as of 1900, civilians constituted 10% of all casualties, but by the 1990s, civilians constituted 90% of all casualties.^[14] This figure has been widely doubted, and research has found little to no evidence that 90% of casualties are civilians.^[14] The 2005 Human Security Report called it a "myth" and instead suggested that 30–60% of fatalities from conflicts in 2002 were civilians.^[2] Likewise, the International Committee of the Red Cross estimated in 1999, that between 30 and 65% of conflict casualties were civilians.^[1]

There are two original sources for the myth of 90% of casualties being civilians. The first source – Christa Ahlström and Kjell-Åke Nordquist's 1991 Casualties of Conflict^[15] published by Uppsala University – stated that "nine out of ten victims (dead and uprooted) of war and armed  conflict today are civilians".^[1][2] Some readers misconstrued it as 90% of fatalities being civilians. In fact, the same report counted only fatalities for the year of 1989 and in that case found only 67% of fatalities were civilians.^[1][2] The second source was Ruth Sivard's World Military and Social Expenditures,^[16] also published in 1991. Sivard did indeed say that 90% of deaths in conflicts, during the year 1990, were civilian. But Sivard included famine-related deaths, which are typically not counted in civilian casualty ratios.^[1][2] Sivard was also criticized for not stating her sources, and the Human Security Report 2005 noted there was insufficient global data on deaths caused by war-related famine.^[2] Nevertheless, these claims were erroneously picked up by Graca Machel's "The Machel Review 1996–2000: A Critical Analysis of Progress Made and Obstacles Encountered in Increasing Protection for War-Affected Children" written for the UNICEF.^[1]

Some 7 million combatants on both sides are estimated to have died during World War I, along with an estimated 10 million non-combatants, including 6.6 million civilians.^{[citation needed]} The civilian casualty ratio in this estimate would be about 59%. Boris Urlanis notes a lack of data on civilian losses in the Ottoman Empire, but estimates 8.6 million military killed and dead and 6 million civilians killed and dead in the other warring countries.^[17] The civilian casualty ratio in this estimate would be about 42%. Most of the civilian fatalities were due to famine, typhus, or Spanish flu rather than combat action. The relatively low ratio of civilian casualties in this war is due to the fact that the front lines on the main battlefront, the Western Front, were static for most of the war, so that civilians were able to avoid the combat zones.^{[citation needed]}

Germany suffered 300-750,000 civilian dead during and after the war due to famine caused by the Allied blockade. Russia and Turkey suffered civilian casualties in the millions in the Russian Civil War and invasion of Anatolia respectively.^[18] Armenia suffered up to 1.5 million civilians dead in the Armenian genocide.^[19]

According to most sources, World War II was the most lethal war in world history, with some 70 million killed in six years. According to some, the civilian to combatant fatality ratio in World War II lies somewhere between 3:2 and 2:1, or from 60% to 67%.^[5][20] According to others, the ratio is at least 3:1 and potentially higher.^[21] The high ratio of civilian casualties in this war was due in part to the increasing effectiveness and lethality of strategic weapons which were used to target enemy industrial or population centers, and famines caused by economic disruption. An estimated 2.1–3 million Indians died in the Bengal famine of 1943 in India during World War II. A substantial number of civilians in this war were also deliberately killed by Axis powers as a result of genocide such as the Holocaust or other ethnic cleansing campaigns.^[18]

The median total estimated Korean civilian deaths in the Korean War is 2,730,000. The total estimated North Korean combatant deaths is 213,000 and the estimated Chinese combatant deaths is over 400,000. In addition to this the Republic of Korea combatant deaths is around 134,000 dead and the combatant deaths for the United Nations side is around 49,000 dead and missing (40,000 dead, 9,000 missing). The estimated total Korean war military dead is around 793,000 deaths. The civilian-combatant death ratio in the war is approximately 3:1 or 75%. One source estimates that 20% of the total population of North Korea perished in the war.^[22]

The Vietnamese government has estimated the number of Vietnamese civilians killed in the Vietnam War at two million, and the number of NVA and Viet Cong killed at 1.1 million—estimates which approximate those of a number of other sources.^[7] This would give a civilian-combatant fatality ratio of approximately 2:1, or 67%. These figures do not include civilians killed in Cambodia and Laos. However, the lowest estimate of 411,000^[23] civilians killed during the war (including civilians killed in Cambodia and Laos) would give a civilian-combatant fatality ratio of approximately 1:3, or 25%. Using the lowest estimate of Vietnamese military deaths, 400,000, the ratio is about 1:1.^{[citation needed]}

During the 1991–1995 Bosnian war, one study estimated 97,207 were killed, of which 39,648 (41%) were civilians.^[4] That study did acknowledge that it likely underestimated the civilian count and overestimated the soldier count.^[4] The Demographic Unit of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia used the capture-recapture method to estimate war-related deaths at 104,723, of which 42,106 (40%) were civilians.^[4]

In 1999, NATO intervened in the Kosovo War with a bombing campaign against Yugoslav forces, who were conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing. The bombing lasted about 2½ months, until forcing the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army from Kosovo.^{[citation needed]}

Estimates for the number of casualties caused by the bombing vary widely depending on the source. NATO unofficially claimed a toll of 5,000 enemy combatants killed by the bombardment; the Yugoslav government, on the other hand, gave a figure of 638 of its security forces killed in Kosovo.^[24] Estimates for the civilian toll are similarly disparate. Human Rights Watch counted approximately 500 civilians killed by the bombing; the Yugoslav government estimated between 1,200 and 5,000.^[25]

If the NATO figures are to be believed, the bombings achieved a civilian to combatant kill ratio of about 1:10, on the Yugoslav government's figures, conversely, the ratio would be between 4:1 and 10:1. If the most conservative estimates from the sources cited above are used, the ratio was around 1:1.^{[citation needed]}

During the First Chechen War, 4,000 separatist fighters and 40,000 civilians are estimated to have died, giving a civilian-combatant ratio of 10:1. The numbers for the Second Chechen War are 3,000 fighters and 13,000 civilians, for a ratio of 4.3:1. The combined ratio for both wars is 7.6:1. Casualty numbers for the conflict are notoriously unreliable. The estimates of the civilian casualties during the First Chechen war range from 20,000 to 100,000, with remaining numbers being similarly unreliable.^[26] The tactics employed by Russian forces in both wars were heavily criticized by human rights groups, which accused them of indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian areas and other crimes.^[27][28]

According to the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, as of January 2015 roughly 92,000 people had been killed in the Afghanistan war, of which over 26,000 were civilians, for a civilian to combatant ratio of 1:2.5.^[82]

According to a 2010 assessment by John Sloboda of Iraq Body Count, a United Kingdom-based organization, American and Coalition forces (including Iraqi government forces) had killed at least 28,736 combatants as well as 13,807 civilians in the Iraq War, indicating a civilian to combatant casualty ratio inflicted by coalition forces of 1:2.^[83] However, overall, figures by the Iraq Body Count from 20 March 2003 to 14 March 2013 indicate that of 174,000 casualties only 39,900 were combatants, resulting in a civilian casualty rate of 77%. Most civilians were killed by anti-government insurgents and unidentified third parties.^[84]

The global coalition's War against the Islamic State, from 2014, had led to as many as 50,000 ISIL combatant casualties by the end of 2016.^[85] Airwars calculated that 8,200–13,275 civilians were killed in Coalition airstrikes, mainly up to the end of 2017, with especially high casualty rates during the Battle of Mosul.^[86] An Associated Press investigation found that in the Battle of Mosul, of the >9,000 fatalities, between 42% and 60% were civilians.^[87]

The civilian casualty ratio for U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan conducted during 2004 and 2018 as part of the war on terror is notoriously difficult to quantify. In 2010, the U.S. itself put the number of civilians killed from drone strikes in the last two years at no more than 20 to 30, a total that is far too low according to a spokesman for the NGO CIVIC.^[88] At the other extreme, Daniel L. Byman of the Brookings Institution suggested in 2009 that drone strikes may kill "10 or so civilians" for every militant killed, which would represent a civilian to combatant casualty ratio of 10:1. Byman argues that civilian killings constitute a humanitarian tragedy and create dangerous political problems, including damage to the legitimacy of the Pakistani government and alienation of the Pakistani populace from America.^[89] An ongoing study by the New America Foundation finds non-militant casualty rates started high but declined steeply over time, from about 60% (3 out of 5) in 2004–2007 to less than 2% (1 out of 50) in 2012. In 2011, the study put the overall non-militant casualty rate since 2004 at 15–16%, or a 1:5 ratio, out of a total of between 1,908 and 3,225 people killed in Pakistan by drone strikes since 2004.^[90]

The civilian to combatant ratio in the Sri Lankan civil war was likely worse than 1:1.^[4]

Although it is estimated that over 1 million people died in the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1920, most died from disease and hunger as an indirect result of the war. Combat deaths are generally agreed to have totaled about 250,000. According to Eckhardt, these included 125,000 civilian deaths and 125,000 combatant deaths, creating a civilian-combatant death ratio of 1:1 among combat deaths.^[91][92]

The casualty figures for the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey between the years 2000 and 2016, show 13–18% of those killed were civilians. The data did not distinguish between civilians killed by Turkish forces vs those killed by PKK militants.^[93]

• Non-combatant casualty value
• Casualty recording
• Collateral damage
• Asymmetric warfare
• Fourth generation warfare
• Loss exchange ratio
• Just war
  • Distinction (law)
  • Proportionality (law)
  • Military necessity