"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)."
Recording casualties is essential to any functioning society. Creating such records honors those who have suffered. It provides a foundation for understanding the processes that caused the casualties, for providing services that facilitate survivors? recovery, and for increasing the chances that perpetrators pay for their crimes. Armed conflicts, and the attendant breakdown of social institutions, greatly complicate the challenges of creating trustworthy records of individual casualties. In their absence, inferential methods must be used to generate estimates of the overall toll. Those who do the work of recording and estimation not only face difficult technical problems, but often operate in perilous conditions, pressured by those affected by their conclusions.
Given the stakes riding on these records and estimates, it is essential that the work be performed to the highest possible scientific standard. To this end, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh will convene an interdisciplinary and international Conference on Casualty Recording and Estimation. It will bring together leading researchers in order to identify the state of the science, including its uncertainties and controversies. The resulting papers and proceedings will be published in a form accessible to practitioners, including human rights advocates, humanitarian aid workers, and transitional justice specialists. It will also contribute to the emerging field of human rights science, dedicated to producing sound solutions to these intellectually demanding problems.
