U.S. sends no delegation as civilian-harm forum it cofounded meets

Pentagon CHMR staffing fell from nearly 200 to about two dozen

No U.S. delegation will attend Thursday’s meeting of the International Contact Group on Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response at NATO headquarters in Belgium, according to ProPublica. Days before the two-day summit was due to open, the United States was not listed as a participant, and there was no sign that anyone from the Defense Department would attend. Current and former officials predicted either a no-show or, at most, a single delegate from one of the commands.

Participants gathered in Brussels this week to discuss how to continue strengthening civilian harm mitigation and response. ProPublica reported that the early momentum from the U.S. side had evaporated after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismantled the Pentagon’s civilian-protection mission.

Current and former officials told ProPublica that the absence reinforced the abandonment of a mission the Pentagon had encouraged partners to embrace. Most spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from President Donald Trump’s administration. They called the step back “humiliating” and “dangerous,” pointing to reports of rising civilian casualties in Iran following strikes on schools and homes.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the lack of U.S. participation in the Brussels talks. A spokesperson previously told ProPublica that the Defense Department factors civilian protections into all phases of operational planning and “remains committed to fulfilling its civilian harm mitigation and response responsibilities.”

Experts viewed the developments as the end of the period of U.S. leadership on civilian protection, ProPublica reported.

Jenny McAvoy, a former Defense Department official who helped shape the U.S. civilian-protection program, said there were already consequences from abandoning the work.

“There will be a day when people who care about mitigating civilian harm can come back and say, ‘OK, are we ready to solve this problem?’” McAvoy said. “But there are already enormous consequences of abandoning this work.”

The Pentagon led an international civilian-protection effort

Three years ago, the Defense Department led an international effort to better protect civilians during combat. The effort drew on lessons from Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Pentagon created a network with European partners that drove the creation of shared standards. Civilian-harm experts described the period as a “unique opportunity” for American leadership by example.

The Pentagon adopted its civilian harm mitigation and response mission in 2022 after years of bloodshed in the post-9/11 wars. Known as CHMR and pronounced “chimmer,” the framework called for a specialized center to collect strike data and advisers embedded with regional commands to help mitigate risks to noncombatants.

Advocacy groups said it had taken years to get the U.S. military to consider civilian casualties as more than “collateral damage.” The groups sought to show commanders that civilian deaths conflicted with service members’ morals and harmed their missions strategically. The adoption of CHMR guidelines by American defense officials helped counterparts abroad make the case for programs in their own countries.

“By the U.S. putting itself out there and saying, ‘We learned, we can do better,’ it gives permission and makes it OK for other governments to similarly acknowledge, ‘Yeah, we can do better too,’” McAvoy said.

Hegseth, who derides rules of engagement as “woke,” gutted the CHMR program over the objections of the nation’s top commanders, ProPublica reported last month. Staffing fell from nearly 200 people to about two dozen.

The United States and the Netherlands formed the contact group

Not long after the Pentagon adopted CHMR, the United States teamed up with the Netherlands to coordinate civilian-protection work internationally. The countries had been frequent partners in recent military campaigns, including the fight against the Islamic State group, and both were addressing high-profile civilian-casualty incidents.

For the United States, harm in Iraq and Afghanistan had drawn international outrage and pledges from commanders to collect better data and learn from deadly mistakes. The Netherlands was still dealing with the aftermath of a 2015 operation in Iraq in which airstrikes targeting a car-bomb factory ignited a nearby munitions depot. The resulting explosion killed at least 70 civilians and wounded hundreds. Dutch responsibility was not revealed until 2019, causing a national scandal and accusations of a cover-up.

The United States and the Netherlands formed the loose CHMR coalition in 2023. Participants described a small, informal group that has met half a dozen times since 2023 to share best practices and hear briefings on civilian-casualty trends.

“The U.S. stopped participating in this group last year and people assumed that meant the group would die,” McAvoy said. “But the group continued to exist and to meet — without the U.S. — under the leadership of the U.K. and the Netherlands.”

A draft agenda reviewed by ProPublica showed that the Brussels summit was due to open with a broad discussion of CHMR, including how it applies in coalitions or operations at sea. Advocacy groups and academics were included in the discussion. Day 2 was scheduled as a closed-door session among senior representatives of member states, followed by a “looking ahead” panel.

Past attendees included Austria, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany and Norway. Participants said the countries represented a wide range of approaches and needs involving civilian harm mitigation and response.

The United Kingdom, Netherlands and NATO continue the work

The United Kingdom does not have a formal civilian harm mitigation and response framework. Advocates have spent years pressing the British Ministry of Defense to adopt policies similar to those developed by the United States.

Humanitarian groups generally regarded the American CHMR effort as nascent and imperfect, but the overall framework provided a worthy standard, said Mae Thompson of the Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights, a London-based advocacy group.

Thompson said advocates have framed the Pentagon’s rollback as an opportunity for the United Kingdom to assume a leadership role. She said they were encouraged by a recent internal report from the defense ministry calling for Britain to formalize a program with systems to track civilian harm, investigate, make amends and offer post-harm response.

NATO has a civilian-protection policy that predates the American model, but the organization is incorporating parts of the U.S. approach, said Andrew Hyde, who studies U.S.-European relations at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan foreign policy think tank.

Hyde said international talks help participants determine how CHMR applies in joint operations when the United States, NATO and European countries have different interpretations of harm mitigation. He said the diminished U.S. role means NATO and other partners must take on more coordination.

The leadership shift could make civilian-protection work less dependent on changes between U.S. administrations and lead to more enduring reforms, Hyde said.

“NATO has continued to push forward without U.S. support or participation, keeping up the momentum and ready for U.S. re-engagement,” Hyde said.