In August 2022, at the direction of Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin, the Department of Defense (DoD) released the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP), which reflected an unprecedented commitment to overhauling US policies around preventing, mitigating, and responding to civilian harm resulting from US military operations. The CHMR-AP lays out over a hundred concrete actions, organized by thematic objectives and fiscal year (FY), to steadily improve and build upon DoD civilian harm policies and practices. While the plan itself is expansive, ensuring comprehensive implementation amid competing Department priorities will require sustained attention, resources, and constructive engagement between the Department and civil society.
With the CHMR-AP now in its implementation phase, Center for Civilians in Conflict and the Stimson Center developed an assessment framework to track and evaluate yearly implementation progress across the four phases of the Action Plan (representing FY 2022-2025). This framework indicates whether the DoD‘s progress is on track, ahead, or behind in its CHMR-AP implementation, and, when possible, includes qualitative information around identified challenges, needs, innovations, and lessons learned. This report is intended to inform DoD implementation and public oversight by evaluating progress, recommending technical solutions to implementation challenges, and ensuring public awareness of this important effort.
The status of all actions for FY22-24 were compiled through the collection of data from non-attributional interviews conducted with DoD officials. Interviews were supplemented with data obtained from official Chatham House Rule events, publicly available primary documents, news articles, and press releases. Research for this effort began in Fall 2023, in line with the one-year anniversary of the CHMR-AP’s release. As of the publication of this report, the DoD will be entering its fourth and final year of CHMR-AP implementation. A follow-up report is planned following the fourth and final year of the CHMR-APs implementation (FY25) with updated progress status and identification of any remaining challenges.
The below summarizes key achievements and implementation challenges identified by this report:
Staffing and Institutions: Since the release of the CHMR-AP, the DoD has focused primarily on staffing and developing civilian harm mitigation and response (CHMR) institutions and policies. The CHMR-AP calls for the hiring of 166 new personnel across the DoD and the creation of various new CHMR roles. DoD components experienced numerous challenges and obstacles in personnel recruitment that delayed CHMR-AP implementation, such as difficulties finding candidates with the required CHMR expertise and the long duration of the civilian hiring process. However, as of the writing of this report, nearly all of the 166 positions have been hired and the focus has shifted toward the substantive and technical work laid out in the CHMR-AP. Simultaneously, the DoD has established new CHMR institutions to drive and oversee CHMR efforts across the Department, including the CHMR Steering Committee, a CHMR Directorate within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (USD(P)), and the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence (CP CoE).
Foundational Policy and Doctrine: The DoD has progressed in developing and updating CHMR policies and updating various joint doctrine to integrate CHMR considerations. Numerous CHMR-AP objectives and actions relied in some way on the publication of the long-awaited DoD Instruction on Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR DoD-I) in FY22. The CHMR DoD-I was ultimately not signed and published until December 2023. As a result, all of the actions for which the CHMR DoD-I was a prerequisite were stalled, creating cascading delays across objectives. In particular, the CHMR DoD-I included an official definition of “civilian harm,” whose delayed publication prevented updates to doctrine and the integration of CHMR concepts into professional military education (PME). While we were able to verify that some of the mandated updates to joint doctrine have been made, doctrine updates are not publicly available, and requests by the authors for access to doctrine updates were denied by the DoD. We were unable to determine the rigor of CHMR integration into all updated doctrine; however, we did verify that updates to Joint Publication (JP) 5-0, Joint Planning, included the newly developed definition of the “civilian environment.”
Civilian Harm Mitigation: The DoD has undertaken a number of CHMR-AP actions related to civilian harm prevention and mitigation. For example, efforts are underway to gain a better understanding of the civilian environment and how to integrate the civilian environment into operational planning and joint targeting. Specific examples of these efforts include the creation of civilian environment teams (CETs) at combatant commands (CCMDs) to conduct analysis and create intelligence products on the civilian environment and the incorporation of CHMR into joint targeting exercises. The DoD has also re-established a “red teaming” school for cognitive bias mitigation training and the placement of red team staff at CCMDs, and is in the early stages of developing CHMR curriculum to be incorporated into PME.
Security Cooperation: The DoD’s most prominent CHMR-AP activities related to security cooperation include the development of a framework for CHMR Baselines of Allies and Partners (CBAPs), which assess the capability and willingness of partners to prevent, mitigate, and respond to civilian harm. As of the writing of this report, the development of the framework is nearing completion and has been tested in pilots with two CCMDs. Additionally, USD(P) has taken a lead role in international engagement on CHMR, including through co-leadership of the International Contact Group on Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response. Unfortunately, the CHMR-AP’s security cooperation commitments on paper have stood in stark contrast to the DoD’s actual practice over the implementation period, particularly regarding the US government’s virtually unconditional military support to the government of Israel in the face of catastrophic civilian harm using US weapons.
As the DoD dives deeper into the substantive work of the CHMR-AP, comprehensive and strategic leadership across the Department will be critical to building a robust and accountable CHMR culture and mission. Across the interviews conducted for this project, sources warned of the risk of siloed courses of action and a superficial monitoring of implementation progress. A cohesive and effective approach to implementation will require leadership that understands the full picture of CHMR workstreams, where they intersect, and where friction points or bottlenecks are forming, and has the vision to coordinate across CHMR workstreams where necessary. Lastly, DoD leadership must critically evaluate CHMR-AP progress and impact with an eye towards the most important measuring stick: the experiences of civilians in conflict and the tangible steps taken to protect them and to respond to harm when it occurs.
