Non profit. What is Airwars ?
TRACK. Airwars is a collaborative, not-for-profit transparency project aimed both at tracking and archiving the international air war against so-called Islamic State and other groups in Iraq, Syria and Libya.
With nine Coalition nations bombing in Syria alone – along with the air forces of Russia, Iran, Israel and the Assad regime – there is a pressing public interest need for independent, trustworthy assessments.
As we explain more fully in our Methodology, in addition to tracking the strikes we also seek to assess – and where possible follow up on – credible allegations of civilian casualties. Part of our data is drawn from the US, allied and Russian militaries, which is then cross-referenced against claims by local monitoring groups, media and social media of civilians reported killed.
Airwars fully supports the goals of Every Casualty, the international NGO which campaigns for the recording of victims by all parties to conflicts. As its simple mission statement notes: ‘Governments must ensure that all lives lost to armed violence, anywhere in the world, are properly recorded.’ We are pleased to be a part of the associated Casualty Recorders Network, an international alliance which strives for best practice among its 50 members.
Funding
Airwars is entirely funded by philanthropic organisations, along with significant pro bono contributions from our volunteers.
Thanks to generous funding from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust we employ a part-time specialist in Iraq to monitor the Coalition air campaign, as well as a part-time Syria analyst based in the UK.
Funding from the Open Society Foundations allows us to employ a full time US-based investigative reporter and a UK-based Syria researcher, along with a part time London-based web and data producer.
An emergency grant from the Network for Social Change enables us to employ a researcher to further improve our coverage of Russian airstrikes.
A full time researcher in the Netherlands focuses on Dutch and Belgian arstrikes and transparency – kindly funded by Stichting Democratie en Media.
We have also received a small project grant from UK defence think tank the Remote Control Project to assess transparency and accountability among Coalition allies.
https://airwars.org/
