Casualty recording

Casualty recording is the systematic and continuous process of documenting individual direct deaths from armed conflict or widespread violence.

At minimum, casualty recording typically involves documenting the date and location of a violent incident; the number of people killed; the means of violence or category of weapon used; and the party responsible.

[4] A defining feature of casualty recording is that it is victim-centric and seeks to establish the identity of every fatality including name, age, sex, and other relevant demographic details.

[20][21] The data gathered by a casualty recording project will generally be stored in an electronic or paper-based database, but there is no standard format for sharing or publishing the final results.

[24] Casualty data may also be used to produce digital or physical memorials of those who died, as in the case of Remembering The Ones We Lost, which memorialises individuals who were killed or went missing during the conflict in South Sudan.

Some internationally mandated entities, including UN peacekeeping missions or commissions of inquiry, conduct casualty recording as part of their broader work.