Description
Civilian protection during international military missions has become increasingly structured around practices, tools, and frameworks that seek to manage harm to civilians. A multitude of models have developed under the auspices of organizations such as the European Union (EU), African Union (AU), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the United Nations (UN), as well as national militaries, to address the conduct of armed forces deployed under international mandates. This article illustrates how transnational expertise shapes these practices, tools, and frameworks of civilian harm mitigation. We trace their emergence and the conditions under which they are sustained, showing how transnational expertise reorients protection toward managing reputational risks for international organizations. We argue that harm to civilians is increasingly framed as a problem of technocratic risk management, with the effect that expertise which addresses strategic and operational concerns becomes more authoritative than that which addresses moral concerns. The paper ends with an assessment of what risk management of harm may mean as state coalitions and ad hoc formats of military interventions become more salient.
