Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict

= About CIVIC =

Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) was founded in 2003 by Marla Ruzicka – a young activist and humanitarian who realized the need for an organization focused on the plight of innocent civilians harmed in war.

In 2001, just weeks after the war began in Afghanistan, Marla traveled to a hospital there and to refugee camps in Pakistan. This first glimpse of the human cost of war changed her life forever. Marla noted that no one – not even the U.S. military – was keeping count or helping civilians injured or the families of those killed. After organizing a door-to-door survey of the Afghan people, she took her results to Washington. An aid on the Senate Appropriations Committee would later say:

“She’d actually seen what we’d only read about, namely U.S. bombs dropped in the wrong place, which had wiped out whole communities. Marla gave us on-the-ground information about these people and told us that nothing was being done to help them.”

As a new war in Iraq unfolded, Marla moved to Baghdad. Within months, she was among the few westerners who stayed, continuing to do what she could to get help to families devastated in the conflict. In 2003, Marla founded Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) – creating an organization to take on what she herself was doing with the help solely of volunteers. With Senator Leahy, Marla helped create the first-ever US-funded aid programs dedicated specifically helping rebuild the lives of civilians unintentionally harmed by US combat operations.

Following Marla’s tragic passing as a result of a suicide bomb in Baghdad in April 2005, her colleagues, friends and family knew that CIVIC held a unique place in the advocacy community that should not be left vacant. A staff was hired in early 2006, and CIVIC began a new life built on Marla’s extraordinary legacy.

Firmly grounded in its successes establishing smarter, more compassionate US policies for war victims, the organization expanded its mandate in early 2007 beyond Iraq and Afghanistan. In doing so, CIVIC wanted to recognize the commonality of suffering among war victims in more than 70 conflicts raging to varying degrees worldwide and the lack of accountability among warring parties.

A New Global Norm

CIVIC leads the way on three fronts:

First, CIVIC urges warring parties to take responsibility and provide help to civilians they’ve harmed. For example, CIVIC helped create US-funded programs to aid war victims in Iraq and Afghanistan, and also worked with NATO to create a compensation fund there. Those efforts are successfully dignifying innocent lives, rebuilding families and ensuring accountability for harm done.

Second, CIVIC is pressing the adoption of a new international norm dictating recognition and making amends to war victims. No treaty, custom or norm requires nations to help those the Laws of War fail to protect. Human rights cannot thrive among populations left decimated and then forgotten.

Third, CIVIC is the voice for war victims so often overshadowed by more sensational stories. CIVIC ensures media attention, recognition of war victims among policymakers, and gathers the stories of war victims to show the human cost of conflict seldom seen. In fact, in the last year CIVIC's director traveled to Afghanistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka to do just that and published OpEds in the Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, and USA Today to recommend policy changes for war victims.

After receiving an invitation to Ft. Irwin National Training Center to survey operations, CIVIC partnered with the US military to train US soldiers shipping out to Iraq and Afghanistan on avoiding civilians and how to compensate for harm. We worked with the ACLU to analyze civilian claims of damages crafted legislation to address shortfalls in the current system – the Civilian Claims Act, pending under Senator Leahy. CIVIC successfully pressed NATO member states to develop a trust fund for war victims, to fund it, and to ensure it works. CIVIC now has a military lawyer working with Harvard to document US efforts – both good and bad – to make amends to civilians suffering losses and a fellow living in Afghanistan to help us coordinate aid from NATO and the US to war victims. Too, over one-third of contributions to CIVIC come from individual contributions – a tribute to the resonance of CIVIC's cause with the public.

CIVIC is asking all parties engaged in conflict to do something exceptional: to establish a new standard of behavior that helps civilians harmed by their operations. We keep our eye on that goal while working across a range of activities to improve the lives of civilians already harmed by bullets and bombs. Now, with CIVIC's successes on US and NATO policy firmly under our belts, CIVIC is addressing harm to civilians in war beyond Iraq and Afghanistan. The need for an organization devoted to pressing for resources for war victims and an awareness of the commonality of their suffering at the international level has been made evident by the positive response CIVIC has received from human rights, justice, international law and humanitarian communities alike.

External links

* [http://www.civicworldwide.org Official site]

Note

# Rory McCarthy, "Iraq: after the war: Campaigners count bodies to ensure US compensation", The Guardian (London), May 17, 2003.