Volume 94 Number 886 Summer 2012

Documenting
violations ofinternational
humanitarian law
from space: a criticalreview of geospatial
analysis of satellite
imagery during armed
conﬂicts in Gaza
(2009), Georgia (2008),
and Sri Lanka (2009)
Joshua Lyons
Josh Lyons is the satellite imagery analyst at Human Rights
Watch (HRW). Before joining HRW, he was the principal analystof the UN’s operational satellite applications programme(UNOSAT). Mr Lyons has master’s degrees in international
relations from the London School of Economics (LSE), andgeographic information science from University College London(UCL).

Abstract
Since the launch of the ﬁrst commercial very high resolution satellite sensor in 1999
there has been a growing awareness and application of space technology for the
remote identiﬁcation of potential violations of human rights and international
humanitarian law. As examined in the three cases of armed conﬂict in Gaza, Georgia,
doi:10.1017/S1816383112000756

739

J. Lyons – Documenting violations of international humanitarian law from spaceand Sri Lanka, analysis of satellite imagery was able to provide investigators withindependent, veriﬁable, and compelling evidence of serious violations of international
humanitarian law. Also examined are the important limitations to such imagerybased analysis, including the larger technical, analytical, and political challenges
facing the humanitarian and human rights community for conducting satellite-based
analysis in the future.
Keywords: satellite imagery, armed conflict, international humanitarian law, IHL, Gaza, Georgia,
Sri Lanka, space technology, human rights, geospatial, GEOINT, human rights Watch, HRW,
Richard Goldstone, UNOSAT, South Ossetia, damage assessment, Tamil Tigers, LTTE, Goldstone Report,
Israel, IDF, United Nations, UN, UNITAR, IMINT.

The application of satellite technology for the remote identiﬁcation of potential
violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) was clearly demonstrated by theselective release of US intelligence imagery over suspected mass graves in Srebrenica
in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999.1 The ﬁrst open source demonstration came withthe commercial release of Ikonos satellite imagery over the city of Grozny in March
2000, a month after the Russian army occupied the city during the Second Chechen
War.2 As shown in Figures 1 and 2, the near total destruction of several thousandbuildings within central Grozny was irrefutably documented in graphic detail. The
implications were as dramatic as they were obvious: commercial satellite imagery
had now made it possible for international investigators to collect evidence on
alleged war crimes remotely from the conﬂict zone, during active hostilities, andindependent of the traditional need to secure ofﬁcial permission from one or moreparties to the conﬂict.
Since the release of the ﬁrst commercially available very high resolution(VHR) satellite imagery in late 19993 there has been a growing awareness of thepotential of this space technology for the independent monitoring and analysis of
events on the ground during periods of armed conﬂict, and speciﬁcally as a sourceof evidence for serious violations of IHL.

1

2
3

740

Yahya A. Dehqanzada and Ann M. Florini, ‘Secrets for sale – how commercial satellite imagery willchange the world’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 2000, available at: http://
carnegieendowment.org/2000/03/01/secrets-for-sale-how-commercial-satellite-imagery-will-changeworld/4jgy (last visited 25 March 2012). See also Lt Col. Peter L. Hays, ‘Transparency, stability, anddeception: military implications of commercial high-resolution imaging satellites in theory and practice’,presented at the International Studies Association Annual Convention, Chicago, 21–24 February 2001,
available at: http://isanet.ccit.arizona.edu/archive/hays.html (last visited 25 March 2012).
Imagery courtesy of GeoEye 2012. The UN characterized Grozny in 2003 as ‘the most destroyed city onearth’. See ‘Scars remain amid Chechen revival’, in BBC News, 3 March 2007, available at: http://news.bbc.
co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6414603.stm (last visited 25 March 2012).
The Ikonos satellite based on declassiﬁed US military technology. VHR imagery is generally deﬁned by aspatial resolution (the minimum image pixel size) of one metre or less in diameter, a threshold thatenables the visual identiﬁcation of many terrestrial objects, including small passenger vehicles, makeshift
refugee shelters, and building damages.

Volume 94 Number 886 Summer 2012

Figure 1: Central Grozny (Minutka Sq.) on 16 December 1999 (Image © GeoEye).

Over the last thirteen years the number of commercial and dual-use4
satellite sensors has rapidly grown to over ten, providing a remote monitoring andanalytical capacity which has been successfully employed in a modest but growing
number of cases, covering the full conﬂict spectrum from traditional inter-state andcivil wars, to cases of counterinsurgency and organized intercommunal violence.
Detailed analysis of commercially available satellite imagery can, under
speciﬁc circumstances, have an important planning and veriﬁcation role within theinvestigative process. It can provide valuable insights into the spatial and temporalcontext of the conﬂict, it can help identify speciﬁc areas or incidents for further
review, and it can help conﬁrm or challenge testimony of uncertain reliability.
Most importantly, satellite analysis can provide independent, veriﬁable,
and compelling evidence of serious violations of IHL covering, for example, theuse of indiscriminate and disproportionate force in civilian areas; the targeting ofprotected humanitarian and cultural sites; the use of civilians as human shields; thedestruction of installations containing dangerous forces; and the failure to exercise
precautionary measures to protect civilians from the effects of attacks.5
However, for all the compelling cases where satellite imagery has playeda signiﬁcant and dynamic role in monitoring armed conﬂicts and documenting
4
5

Dual-use satellite systems are jointly developed, ﬁnanced, and controlled through bilateral agreements
between private companies and national intelligence agencies or military agencies.
Covered in Articles 51, 53, 56, and 57 of Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August
1949, Articles 11, 15 and 16 of Additional Protocol II, and relevant customary IHL rules.
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J. Lyons – Documenting violations of international humanitarian law from space

Figure 2: After Russian occupation on 16 March 2000 (Image © GeoEye).

potential war crimes, there are also multiple cases where it provided inconclusive,
ambiguous, and sometimes misleading or erroneous results which have generallygone underreported, creating a distorted perception of the overall efﬁcacy of spacetechnology, and consequently raising unrealistic expectations within the international humanitarian community.
One important objective of this emerging ﬁeld of applied humanitarian
research should be a more self-critical understanding of the inherent limits
to imagery analysis, as well as the potential political and legal consequences ofconducting incomplete, erroneous, or otherwise misleading analytical work over
conﬂict zones. Considering the increasing interest in and potential adoption of suchtechnical capacity within humanitarian agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) there is a corresponding need for more rigorous debate and the open
exchange of lessons learned and best practices.

Primary applications of satellite analysis for international
humanitarian law
Based on the practical experience of United Nations (UN) agencies andinternational and non-governmental organisations in the 2000s, satellite-based
monitoring and analysis applications fall into two application levels. The ﬁrst is742

Volume 94 Number 886 Summer 2012providing direct support to traditional ﬁeld-based investigations of alleged
war crimes. The second is substituting for these ﬁeld-based investigations.
The distinction between these two application levels has generally depended on
the quantity and relevance of the available satellite data and, most importantly,
on the overall level of political and physical access to the affected areas and people
under investigation.

Imagery analysis in support of ﬁeld-based investigations
When direct and meaningful ﬁeld access is possible, satellite analysis can provide a
range of analytical and technical support to traditional investigations by improving
the overall planning, quality, and accuracy of ﬁeld-based work. Speciﬁcally, satellite
analysis can have an investigative multiplier effect by, for example, identifying andevaluating sites of interest before mission deployment, thereby potentially saving
signiﬁcant time and resources. It is often the case that detailed imagery coverage
and analysis can provide a more accurate estimate of the total number of people orthe infrastructure affected when alleged violations took place months or even years
earlier leaving little remaining physical evidence, or the estimate is based on thetestimony of survivors from a small and potentially non-representative sample ofaffected communities.
Investigators have more frequently relied on satellite data and analysis toprovide corroborative evidence to help evaluate the accuracy of reported incidents
or claims from sources of unknown reliability. When there is sufﬁcient spatial andtemporal coverage of satellite imagery that can be accepted and referenced as
an objective baseline dataset, it can provide a common operational picture of
the situation on the ground thereby helping to clarify events when multiple,
contradictory reports or testimonies present a disputed or uncertain understandingof relevant events and locations.
Because of the near-real time capacity of satellite sensors to provide
detailed imagery normally within twelve to twenty-four hours, it has become ade facto standard used to rapidly evaluate reported events that have not yet been
independently veriﬁed in the ﬁeld. An interesting dynamic in this context is theobserved tendency for agencies and organisations responsible for imagery analysis
to publicize only ‘successful’ cases of positive conﬁrmation of expected outcomesor reported events. Although there has been no systematic effort to document the
number of false-positive claims successfully challenged by the rapid assessment ofsatellite imagery, it is almost certainly the case that the number is signiﬁcantly
underestimated. This probable tendency to underreport ﬁndings that run counter to
expected or feared claims of potential war crimes is understandable considering theemotive context, but nevertheless tends to undervalue the full range of potential
beneﬁt that imagery can provide for investigations.
During the Georgian conﬂict (2008), for example, a UN agency requested
rapid imagery collection to assess claims made by the Georgian foreign ministry that‘the Black Sea port of Poti, the site of a major oil shipment facility, had been743

J. Lyons – Documenting violations of international humanitarian law from space“devastated” by a Russian air raid’.6 Surprisingly, the imagery collected revealed
little evidence of aerial bombardment, let alone of devastating damages to the port
facility or adjacent civilian residential buildings. Instead, the imagery assessment
identiﬁed six Georgian navy vessels that had been scuttled in the harbour,
presumably by elite Russian forces who had reportedly occupied the port facilities
for several hours.7
In another instance during the same Georgian conﬂict, reports ofwidespread and deliberate destruction of cultural heritage sites in the Tskhinvali
region led Georgian ofﬁcials to urgently request a detailed satellite assessmentby the UN. The ﬁndings showed that although at least three religious monuments
had likely been destroyed, the majority of sites of concern showed no indications ofdamage. It was eventually concluded, much to the relief of Georgian ofﬁcials, that
there was little evidence to suggest a deliberate campaign by South Ossetian militiasof systematic destruction of Georgian historic monuments in the area, as originallyfeared.8

Imagery analysis as a primary source
The second and perhaps more signiﬁcant application area for satellite-based analysis
is as a primary source of direct evidence relating to potential serious violations of
IHL. Imagery analysis can be used when on-site investigations and access towitnesses are impossible normally due to insecurity, government prohibitions, or
physical inaccessibility. Under these circumstances, satellite imagery has proved to
be one of the only viable means of independent, objective, and systematic collectionof signiﬁcant evidence of possible war crimes, as originally demonstrated over thecity of Grozny during the second Chechen war in 2000. As will be examined in thecases of Georgia (2008) and Sri Lanka (2009), it was precisely the combination of
relevant imagery coverage and a sustained lack of physical access to the conﬂict
zones that made the analysis of satellite data critical to the overall understanding andinvestigation of the conﬂicts.

Three case examples: Gaza (2009), Georgia (2008),
and Sri Lanka (2009)
These three cases were selected because of the relative importance that satellite
imagery analysis played in the context of the conﬂicts, providing meaningful support
as well as direct primary evidence to investigations of alleged violations of IHL.
6
7
8

744

‘Russian jets attack Georgian town’, in BBC News, 9 August 2008, available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
europe/7550804.stm (last visited 15 April 2012).
Satellite imagery assessment done by UNITAR – operational satellite applications programme(UNOSAT). Overview map available at: www.unitar.org/unosat/node/44/1262 (last visited 25 April 2012).
Based on author’s unpublished correspondence and notes. See ‘Satellite damage assessment for cultural
heritage monuments, South Ossetia, Georgia’, UNITAR, available at: http://www.unitar.org/unosat/node/
44/1265 (last visited 25 April 2012).

Volume 94 Number 886 Summer 2012

Although these speciﬁc cases are in many respects strong illustrations of the larger
signiﬁcance and long-term potential of satellite technology for such work, criticallimitations and challenges that were identiﬁed at the time will be examined as well.

Gaza (2009)
Immediately after the start of the Israeli military operation Cast Lead in late
December 2008, satellite-based monitoring and damage assessments over Gaza
were initiated by the UN’s operational satellite applications programme (United
Nations Institute for Training and Research/UN operational satellite applications
programme (UNITAR/UNOSAT)) to support ongoing emergency humanitarian
operations on the ground. A detailed series of damage-assessment-focused products
were publicly released9 and the satellite-derived datasets shared with humanitarianorganisations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, and humanrights organisations, such as Human Rights Watch, for their own internal work.
Within days of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, satellite-based analysis
by the UN had compiled a list of over 3,800 individual damage sites within the
Gaza Strip, including almost 2,700 damaged buildings, 187 demolished greenhousecomplexes, and 930 impact craters on main roads and open/cultivated ﬁelds.10
Based on the speciﬁc damage signatures, the detection of Israeli Defence Forces(IDF) ground forces and associated vehicle patterns, it was generally possible
to attribute the damage to Israeli Air Force (IAF) air strikes, IDF heavy artillery ﬁre,or demolition by IDF tank and bulldozers.11
Following the establishment of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza
Conﬂict by the UN Human Rights Council in April 2009,12 the appointed head of
the Mission, Judge Richard Goldstone, commissioned additional satellite imagery
analysis to support the Mission’s investigation.13 Maps and associated documents
provided the Goldstone Mission with a comprehensive overview of the relative
magnitude and spatial distribution of damages within Gaza. As Goldstone publicly
commented after the completion of the ofﬁcial Report of the United Nations Fact
Finding Mission on the Gaza Conﬂict:14. . . we commissioned . . . a full satellite report, which is part of our report. It’sa thirty-four-page report with satellite photographs of Gaza before and after the
9 See products available at: http://www.unitar.org/unosat/maps/PSE (last visited 25 April 2012).
10 ‘Satellite-based Gaza damage assessment overview’, UNOSAT, available at: http://unosat-maps.web.
cern.ch/unosat-maps/PS/Crisis2008/UNOSAT_GazaStrip_Damage_Review_19Feb09_v3_Lowres.pdf(last visited 25 April 2012).
11 Ibid., attribution to the different Israeli military branches was possible to an uneven extent, depending on
the relative complexity of the environment and level of damages detected.
12 UN GA Res. 60/251, 3 April 2009.
13 ‘Satellite image analysis in support to the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conﬂict’,
UNITAR/UNOSAT, 31 July 2009, available at: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/docs/UNITAR_UNOSAT_FFMGC_31July2009.pdf (last visited 25 April 2012).
14 Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conﬂict, UN Doc. A/HRC/12/
48, 25 September 2009, available at: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/
factﬁndingmission.htm (last visited 25 April 2012).
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J. Lyons – Documenting violations of international humanitarian law from space

Israeli Defence Force campaign. And we used that to corroborate or notcorroborate a lot of the information we got with regard to damage.15
The fact-ﬁnding report used a range of quantitative information derived fromsatellite imagery on the timing of Israeli attacks to corroborate eyewitness
testimonies and, more signiﬁcantly, as primary evidence that was cited as part ofthe legal ﬁndings of grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention by Israeli
forces.16
The section of the report that focused on incidents of ‘deliberate attacks
against the civilian population’ cited, several times, UNOSAT ﬁgures on the numberof building damages in residential areas of Gaza and the period in which theyoccurred. These were used to corroborate testimonies of individual families inrelation to high-proﬁle incidents such as the death of twenty-three members of theal-Samouni family in the Zeytoun neighbourhood of Gaza governorate.17
The most extensive reliance of the Mission on imagery analysis was in thesection of the report on ‘destruction of industrial infrastructure, food production,water installations, sewage treatment plants, and housing’.18 In addition to detailed
observations on the apparent Israeli targeting of a number of important industrial
facilities, UN imagery analysis provided the only comprehensive information on thescale of destruction of greenhouse complexes throughout the Gaza Strip, destructionthat the Mission concluded ‘was not justiﬁed by any possible military objective’.19
Further, in multiple locations throughout the Gaza Strip a spike in Israeli
attacks against commercial and residential buildings was observed during the ﬁnal
days of the conﬂict, immediately preceding the ceaseﬁre and the withdrawal of
IDF ground forces. Quantitative ﬁgures derived from the imagery documenting
this trend raised direct questions about IAF targeting strategy and the issue of
operational necessity. In the case of Rafah, for example, a distinct shift in IAF
targeting was observed in the last week of the conﬂict. Between 27 December 2008
and 10 January 2008, IAF air strikes were concentrated in empty ﬁelds runningalong the Philadelphi Corridor of the border in reported attempts to destroy theunderground tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. However, during the ﬁnal week of
the conﬂict leading up to the Israeli-declared ceaseﬁre on 18 January 2009, there
were indications that IAF air strikes had shifted from targeting underground tunnels
to the destruction of over 500 buildings situated along the border.20
Similar patterns of heavy destruction of buildings in the ﬁnal days of the
conﬂict were identiﬁed from satellite imagery from multiple neighbourhoods in thegovernorates of Gaza and Gaza North, including the al Atatra area that sustained
15 ‘Goldstone transcript: righteous in our generation’, Rabbibrian’s Blog, available at: http://rabbibrian.
wordpress.com/2009/10/23/goldstone-transcript-righteous-in-our-generation/ (last visited 25 April2012).
16 UN Fact Finding Mission Report, above note 14, para. 1006.
17 Ibid., pp. 160 and 174.
18 Ibid., pp. 205–208, and pp. 214–217.
19 Ibid., para 1021.
20 Satellite image analysis in support to the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conﬂict,
UNITAR/UNOSAT, 27 April 2009, pp. 6–13.
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destruction of over 55 per cent of its buildings during the last three days of the
conﬂict.21
As the Mission report concluded in its legal ﬁndings on the timing ofbuilding destruction during the ﬁnal stages of the conﬂict:
Combining the results of its own fact-ﬁnding on the ground with UNOSAT
satellite imagery and the published testimonies of Israeli soldiers, the Mission
concludes that, in addition to the extensive destruction of housing for so-called
operational necessity during their advance, the Israeli armed forces engaged inanother wave of systematic destruction of civilian buildings during the last
three days of their presence in Gaza, aware of their imminent withdrawal. The
conduct of the Israeli armed forces in this respect violated the principle ofdistinction between civilian and military objects and amounted to the grave
breach of ‘extensive destruction . . . of property not justiﬁed by militarynecessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly’.22
Overall, satellite data analysis clearly served an important investigative function that
helped to structure and focus the Mission’s work, raise conﬁdence levels in collected
testimonies by providing independent corroboration, as well as offer independent,
primary evidence cited directly in some of the legal ﬁndings of the Mission report.
Although covered in more detail below in this article, it is important toacknowledge that there were signiﬁcant and sometimes glaring limits to theapplicability of satellite imagery analysis in the case of Gaza. Of particular concern
was the inability, because of a systematic lack of accurate GPS data on importantfacilities throughout Gaza, to locate in the satellite imagery several importantfactories, schools, and hospitals of direct interest to the Mission investigation.
More problematic was the failure to produce any relevant information on potential
IHL violations committed by Hamas, including deploying their forces in populatedareas without taking all feasible steps to minimize harm to civilians, or committing
war crimes by deliberately using civilians as human shields – a signiﬁcant shortcoming with direct implications for the monitoring and analysis of asymmetricalconﬂicts more broadly. Another limitation was the inability to produce relevant
information on the potentially restricted use of certain weapons systems, such as
white phosphorus, by IDF forces. These and other limitations of the work during the
Gaza conﬂict will be covered in more detail below in the section ‘Satellites tothe rescue?’

Georgia (2008)
Following the Georgian military assault on South Ossetian and Russian forcesin Tskhinvali on 7–9 August 2008, and the later withdrawal of the Georgian
forces from the city on 13 August 2008, the UN initiated a satellite-based
monitoring and damage assessment project at the request of several agencies and21 Ibid., pp. 14–22.
22 UN Fact Finding Mission Report, above note 14, paras. 53 and 1006.
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J. Lyons – Documenting violations of international humanitarian law from spaceorganisations.23 Based on initial reports of heavy Georgian artillery and Grad rocket
ﬁre against Ossetian positions, the new imagery was initially focused on the cityof Tskhinvali; however, it quickly became apparent that an enlarged assessment
beyond Tskhinvali would be needed to cover a second wave of violence apparently
taking place to the north and east of the city.
Drawing on lessons learned from the monitoring of post-election arson
attacks in Kenya earlier in January 2008,24 it was possible to use satellite dataobtained from environmental sensors to identify and monitor the outbreak oflarge ﬁres occurring in multiple locations within South Ossetia immediately
following the withdrawal of Georgian forces. Although the environmental sensors
employed25 could not distinguish actual building damages or determine the cause of
the ﬁres, it was reasonably inferred from the timing and location that the sudden
outbreak of ﬁres occurring simultaneously in multiple locations was unlikely to havebeen caused by accidental or natural causes. A more reasonable explanation was thatsuch ﬁres represented a campaign of arson directed against ethnic Georgianvillages – an interpretation conﬁrmed by eyewitness testimony and ﬁeld photos
recorded by Human Rights Watch researchers in South Ossetia at the time of theattacks.26
Daily monitoring of active ﬁre locations revealed a pattern of suspectedarson starting on 10 August immediately north of Tskhinvali and rapidly expanding
in number and extent on 12 August, reaching as far as the ethnic Georgian villagesof Kekhvi to the north and Eredvi to the east. As the ﬁres continued on the following
days, it was possible to identify from the cumulative distribution of detected ﬁrelocations that two distinct clusters of suspected arson attacks were forming, the ﬁrst
centred on ethnic Georgian villages located along the main road (Route P-2) and the
Liakhi River north of Tskhinvali, and the second cluster located along a secondary
road east of Tskhinvali between the villages of Pirsi and Eredvi (see ﬁgure 3).
Analysis of very high resolution satellite data acquired on 19 August 2008
provided further evidence of the arson campaign with the dramatic capture in theimagery of at least eight active building ﬁres. As illustrated in Figure 4, a residentialbuilding located in the village of Kurta was clearly on ﬁre with an associated plumeof dark smoke. Also visible within the satellite imagery were hundreds of small,
residential buildings with distinct arson-related damage signatures, such as the lackof building rooftops but with intact load bearing walls, consistent with the stone
wall/wood roof construction typical of the region.
A rapid damage assessment of the affected villages in the region was
conducted using the satellite imagery from 19 August. Results of the assessment
23 Project work conducted by UNITAR/UNOSAT 2008.
24 Example of arson overview product available at: http://www.unitar.org/unosat/node/44/1035 (last visited
29 April 2012).
25 Fire data obtained from two NASA satellites MODIS Aqua and Terra, which together provided data on
probable active ﬁres within an approximate area of one square kilometre upwards of two to four times
daily.
26 Based on internal UN correspondence. See also ‘Georgia: satellite images show destruction, ethnic attacks’,in Human Rights Watch, 28 August 2008, available at: http://www.hrw.org/news/2008/08/27/georgiasatellite-images-show-destruction-ethnic-attacks (last visited 25 April 2012).
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Figure 3: Map of suspected arson attacks in South Ossetia (Image © UNITAR/UNOSAT).

were publicly released in the form of maps, with ﬁgures on the number of destroyed
and severely damaged buildings aggregated by affected village. For the initial resultscovering the ﬁrst cluster of building damages, including the city of Tskhinvali
northward to the village of Kekhvi, a total of 1,050 buildings were either destroyed
or severely damaged. For the second damage cluster located east of Tskhinvali
between the villages of Pirsi and Eredvi, a further 300 buildings were either
destroyed or severely damaged.27
27 ‘Village damage summary: Kekhvi to Tskhinvali, South Ossetia, Georgia’, UNITAR, 28 August 2008,
available at: http://www.unitar.org/unosat/node/44/1258 (last visited 29 April 2012). Figures for building
damages were all based on ﬁnal post-conﬂict images recorded on 19 August 2008. Based on the fact that749

J. Lyons – Documenting violations of international humanitarian law from space

Figure 4: Residential building on ﬁre after arson attacks in village of Kurta, South Ossetia(Image © DigitalGlobe).

For the majority of these identiﬁed building damages, speciﬁcally thosedamages located outside of the main urban extent of Tskhinvali, it was generally
possible to attribute the damage to a speciﬁc military force, with a limited risk of
conﬂating these damages with those resulting from different military forces. The
arson-related building damages concentrated to the north and east of Tskhinvali
were conﬁdently attributed to South Ossetian militias engaged in a widespread
campaign to cleanse the region of ethnic Georgian residents.
Considering the scale and prolonged nature of the arson attacks over thecourse of a ten-day period, there was at least a prima facie case that the Russians, as
continued active ﬁres in the villages were detected on 22 August 2008, it is likely that there were more than
300 damaged buildings in the four ethnic Georgian villages to the east of Tskhinvali (from Pirsi to Eerie).
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the occupying power of South Ossetia28 at the time, had systematically failed torestrain the militias from attacks against civilians and residential property, and were
therefore responsible for serious violations of multiple Articles in the Fourth Geneva
Convention.29
Because of the recognized complexity of the ground-ﬁghting
between Georgian and Russian/South Ossetian forces in Tskhinvali between 7 and
12 August, it was apparent that a satellite-based damage assessment within the city
posed signiﬁcant technical and political challenges in terms of both accuracy andpotential force attribution. The preliminary assessment for the city was based on theimagery acquired on 19 August 2008, and identiﬁed a total of 230 affected buildings.
Of this total, 175 buildings were completely destroyed and a further ﬁfty-ﬁve
severely damaged.30 The damages were distributed in a roughly uniform pattern
across the city, with multiple small pockets of near total destruction, the worst being
the old Jewish quarter of the city with more than twenty-ﬁve destroyed buildings inclose proximity.31
While review of the damage signatures identiﬁed in the imagery strongly
suggested that most were probably the result of artillery ﬁre, the distinct clusters ofbuilding destruction were more consistent with damage patterns typically resulting
from a barrage of Grad rockets.32 Despite the competing denials of responsibility forthe reported residential building damages, imagery assessment suggested that a
prima facie case existed against Georgian forces for the indiscriminate use of heavy
artillery, and speciﬁcally Grad rockets, against densely populated areas of the cityduring their offensive to capture Tskhinvali on the morning of 8 August 2008.
Based on the ﬁndings of post-conﬂict ﬁeld validations in Lebanon in
2006,33 which showed increasing errors of omission for less severe forms of building
damages, it was assumed at the time of the initial assessment that building
damages were likely to have been underestimated within the urban environment ofTskhinvali. However, what was poorly understood during the assessmentof Tskhinvali was the potential magnitude of the underestimation of severe building
damages resulting from tank and artillery shells ﬁred at close range into the sides ofbuildings.
In September 2008 a Russian NGO, Charta Caucasica, based in the republicof North Ossetia later posted a critical review of the UN satellite-based damage
28 Report of Independent International Fact Finding Mission on the Conﬂict in Georgia (IIFFMCG),
Council of the European Union, 2009, paras. 19–28, available at: http://www.ceiig.ch/pdf/
IIFFMCG_Volume_I.pdf (last visited June 2012).
29 Based on the imagery recorded on 19 August, multiple concentrations of Russian main battle tanks andassorted heavy transport vehicles were identiﬁed in villages north of Tskhinvali at the time arson attacks
were occurring, strongly suggesting that Russian forces had passively supported the Ossetian campaign oflooting and destruction against ethnic Georgian villages and property.
30 Damage ﬁgures from initial UNOSAT assessment completed on 22 August 2008.
31 See ﬁeld report of Jewish Quarter destruction in Catherine Belton, ‘Tskhinvali bears scars of militarymaelstrom’, in The Financial Times, 18 August 2008, available at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/06946f306cbb-11dd-96dc-0000779fd18c.html#axzz1tedp35Eb (last visited 10 April 2012).
32 Based on author’s internal UN correspondence.
33 Internal ﬁeld validation commissioned by UNITAR/UNOSAT in southern and eastern areas of Lebanon
following the conﬂict with Israel, September–October 2006.
751

J. Lyons – Documenting violations of international humanitarian law from spaceassessment for Tskhinvali. Based on a basic ground survey of the city, the NGOgraphically documented the location and type of damages that the UN assessment
had failed to identify. Although their critical ground survey was neither rigorous nor
did it attempt to provide statistical estimates for errors of omission and commission,
the observations in it nevertheless strongly suggested that overall building damages
in the city had been seriously underestimated because of the generalized failure
to identify from the available imagery the artillery and rocket ﬁre into the sidesof mostly residential high-rise buildings.34
Ground photos of buildings with clearly deﬁned side-impact craters andblast marks were presented with annotated clips of the relevant building as marked
in the UN satellite image maps. Figures 5 and 6 show the exact location ofunidentiﬁed damaged buildings as located in the imagery and the associated photosof the same location taken from the ground. The general conclusion of Charta
Caucasica was that satellite imagery was poorly suited for accurate assessment of thefull range of damage within the city because of the limited view angle and spatial
resolution of the sensor used.35 These important limitations should have been better
understood and anticipated, and that more explicit disclaimers and qualiﬁcations
should have been included in the maps produced.

Sri Lanka (2009)
Satellite analysis work conducted by the UN during the Sri Lankan civil war was
initiated following a direct request in January 2009 from the UN Country Team in
Colombo to provide population estimates of internally displaced Tamil civilians
trapped within the government declared No Fire Zones (NFZ-1, -2 or -3) in
Mullaittivu district.36 Satellite imagery was also collected and analysed during theﬁnal ﬁve months of the conﬂict to provide monitoring of large-scale civilian
movements, to assess reported shelling incidents within the NFZs, and to identify
building damages and impact craters from artillery ﬁre and air strikes. Because of
the political sensitivity of the negotiations between the UN Country Team and
Sri Lankan authorities over humanitarian access to the conﬂict zone, satellitederived reports were not released publicly. However, the Sri Lankan government was
duly informed of both their production at the time and the general ﬁndings of theanalysis during the course of negotiations.37
A second phase of analysis was conducted in direct support of the UN
Secretary General’s Panel of Experts on Sri Lanka in 2010 (the Panel).38 Using an
34
35
36
37

Available at: http://www.caucasica.org/analytics/detail.php?ID=1387 (last visited 29 April 2012).
Ibid.
Project work conducted by UNITAR/UNOSAT in 2009.
The leak of one report by a foreign Embassy to the UK media and the subsequent accidental release ofa second report, both in April 2009, provoked a small diplomatic crisis provoking the Sri Lankan
government to accuse the UN of ‘spying’. See interpretation from US Embassy cable, available at: http://
wikileaks.org/cable/2009/05/09COLOMBO484.html# (last visited 4 May 2012).
38 Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka, UN Doc. 31 March
2011, para. 127, available at: http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/Sri_Lanka/POE_Report_Full.pdf(last visited June 2012).

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Figure 5: Ground photo of damaged building with side impact crater, Tskhinvali (September2008), (photograph courtesy of NGO Caucasica).

approach similar to that used by the Goldstone Mission on Gaza, the Panel drew
upon the analysis of satellite imagery for corroboration of individual testimonies
related to the shelling of protected sites. The Panel also looked to the imagery
analysis to provide, when possible, primary analysis on force attribution for theshelling of areas within the NFZs that were populated with thousands of civilians
at the time.
Additional analytical work was conducted on air strike locations andtargeting by the Sri Lankan air force, as well as the projected ﬁre bearings of
Sri Lankan army mortar and heavy artillery batteries in relation to documented
zones of indiscriminate shelling. The analysis ﬁndings were presented to the Panelin the form of multiple brieﬁngs as well as a ﬁnished report,39 which was partiallyincorporated into the Panel’s ﬁnal report to the Secretary General, released in
March 2011.40
39 ‘Geospatial Analysis in Support to the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Sri Lanka’, unreleased UN
Doc, 17 January 2011.
40 Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts, above note 38.
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J. Lyons – Documenting violations of international humanitarian law from space

Figure 6: Satellite map of building shown in Figure 5 (marked in green) surrounded bybuilding damages identiﬁed from the imagery (marked in red) (UNITAR/UNOSAT)(Image © DigitalGlobe).

The Panel was primarily interested in detailed damage assessments for a listof protected medical and humanitarian facilities within the conﬂict zone, both to
conﬁrm the dates of reported artillery shelling, and to determine attribution for theattacks if possible. Of the ten speciﬁc medical, humanitarian, and religious facilities
examined for the Panel,41 each showed clear indications of severe building damages
probably resulting from indirect artillery ﬁre. Further, the seven medical facilities
and the UN humanitarian aid centre were apparently subject to artillery ﬁrewhile they were reportedly still operational and occupied by civilians seeking
humanitarian assistance.
Damage identiﬁed within the satellite imagery ranged from small impact
craters on building roofs and open courtyards, to instances of total building collapse.
All the sites reviewed were either clearly marked as protected humanitarian sites
41 These facilities were seven hospitals, the UN distribution centre, and two cultural/religious sites (New
Housing Colony Kandaswamy Temple in PTK, and Kumara Kanapathi Pillaiyar temple in Mullivaykkal
West division, NFZ-2).
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Impact crater on
hospital compound(21 January–5 February 2009)

Hospital building
severely damaged(5–18 February 2009)

Impact crater damage
to hospital building roof
(5–18 February 2009)

Two impact craters
on hospital building roof
(5–18 February 2009)

Impact crater damage
to hospital building roof
(15–18 February 2009)

Impact crater on
hospital compound
21 January–5 February 2009
3 Hospital buildings
destroyed(5–18 February 2009)

Building destroyed
21 January–5 February 2009

Hospital building
destroyed(5–18 February 2009)

Building destroyed
5 Feburary–15 March 2009

4 Hospital buildings
destroyed (5–18 February 2009)

Figure 7: Satellite-based damage assessment for Vallipunam hospital, Sri Lanka (UNITAR/
UNOSAT).

with rooftop medical insignia visible from the air,42 or easily distinguishedas protected cultural sites by the distinctive building architecture. As shown in
Figure 7, the assessment provided to the Panel of the damage to the Vallipunam
hospital located on the southern edge of the ﬁrst NFZ-1 clearly indicated thecompound had been heavily damaged by artillery shelling and on multiple dates.43
With respect to the question of attribution, although there was little doubtthat the protected sites reviewed had been damaged by repeated artillery shelling,
there was in fact no signature evidence that would have enabled determinationof responsibility for the damage, let alone to address the allegations of deliberatetargeting. Such damage signatures left by small- and medium-calibre mortar ﬁrecould have conceivably come from either the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) or the Sri Lankan
army. This is not to suggest that it was impossible to use the imagery available toattribute damage, only that it was not possible based on the site-speciﬁc eyewitness
testimonies provided to the Panel.
However, once the scale of assessment was expanded to cover larger areasthat encompassed the protected sites it became possible to draw reasoned
conclusions about which military force was likely responsible for the attack.
42 The Red Cross symbol was generally easily visible in the commercial satellite imagery used in the report.
43 Assessment maps for the protected sites were included publicly in the Report of the Secretary-General’s
Panel of Experts, above note 38.
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Detailed assessments for areas within the NFZ-1 and the NFZ-2, and the centre of
Puthukkudiyiruppu (PTK) identiﬁed a total of 1,525 speciﬁc damage sites.44 Of thistotal, over 200 permanent buildings were either destroyed or severely damaged,
with an additional 230 separate impact craters identiﬁed on permanent building
rooftops, and a further 1,020 impact craters identiﬁed on open spaces (i.e. ﬁelds,
beaches, etc.).
Based on analysis of these larger shelling zones, it was concluded thatdamages to the speciﬁc protected sites were, in fact, not the result of isolated or
misdirected artillery ﬁre, but part of much larger shelling events, best characterized
as area bombardment. Considering the volume of munitions deployed over suchlarge areas and the depleted state of LTTE forces, there was little doubt that only the
Sri Lankan army was capable of such heavy and sustained artillery ﬁre. Detailed
maps and quantitative ﬁgures on these shelling zones were presented to the Panelfor consideration as compelling cases of indiscriminate and disproportionate
military force by the Sri Lankan army in areas densely populated with tens of
thousands of displaced Tamil civilians.45
A detailed review of probable air-strike-related damages during a ﬁvemonth period identiﬁed over 130 separate locations directly attributable to the
Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF).46 A signiﬁcant majority of these air strikes weredirected against locations with indications of recent LTTE activity,47 outside
designated NFZs, and removed from concentrations of civilian tents. There were,
nevertheless, over ten speciﬁc air strike impact craters identiﬁed immediately
adjacent to civilian tent concentrations and a functioning hospital. One particular
air strike location identiﬁed inside the NFZ-2 was documented at the time in aninternal UN report completed on 2 April 2009,48 and represented the ﬁrst
independent evidence of government air strikes within the NFZ-2 contrary to an
explicit prohibition against, and denial of, such attacks by the Sri Lankan
government.49 This report was obtained by a journalist in Colombo who broadcast
a story, discussing the main ﬁndings of the report, for Channel 4 ITN (UK) on
21 April 2009. The fact that Sri Lankan authorities did not issue any comment

44 Deﬁned as individual impact craters located on building roofs, open ﬁelds, wetlands, and roads, as well as
permanent buildings that show damage signatures more severe than limited rooftop impact craters(i.e. partial or total destruction).
45 ‘Geospatial analysis’, above note 39.
46 There was no remaining LTTE air force by late January 2009.
47 Speciﬁc site examples included the construction of defensive earthen berms and trenches, building activity
immediately adjacent to thick tree-cover near the front line, visible troop formations along roads andbeaches, and small boats partially buried on beaches.
48 Satellite-Detected Damages and IDP shelter Movement Report for March 2009, internal UN distribution,
2 April 2009. It was noted in the report that the air strike location identiﬁed was within a section of the
NFZ-2 without visible civilian tent shelters.
49 ‘Sri Lanka admits bombing safe zone’, in Al-Jazeera, 2 May 2009, available at: http://english.aljazeera.net/
news/asia/2009/05/20095141557222873.html (last visited 3 May 2012).
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following the broadcast was interpreted at the time as a tacit validation of the reportconclusions.50
An important contribution to the Panel’s investigation was a detailed
analysis of Sri Lankan artillery batteries located throughout the conﬂict zone.
By monitoring the positioning and orientation of the howitzers and mortar pits overtime, it was possible to observe that the Sri Lankan army repeatedly rotated theﬁre bearing of their artillery towards the NFZ-2 and later the NFZ-3, tracking the
movements of civilians and LTTE forces alike as they were forced into the southern
sections of a barrier island in late April and early May 2009. These ﬁndings were
presented to the Panel as compelling evidence that the Sri Lanka Army had,throughout the last months of the conﬂict, established, maintained, and updated an
operational military capability to direct substantial quantities of artillery ﬁre into
these NFZs that were heavily populated with civilians at the time.51
As illustrated in Figure 8, there were also documented cases in which the
Sri Lanka Army erected artillery batteries on the grounds of a primary school andthe main PTK hospital.52
In contrast to Gaza, where no meaningful evidence was produced on
potential violations of IHL committed by Hamas during the conﬂict, there was asigniﬁcant, if incomplete, body of compelling evidence against the Tamil Tigers
during the ﬁnal stages of the civil war. Not only was it possible to identify cases
where the LTTE had tactically deployed artillery next to civilians, apparently using
them as human shields – a war crime – it was also possible to document the LTTE’s
repeated construction of military fortiﬁcations (mostly earthen berms and trenches)adjacent to medical facilities, religious sites, and other shelters ﬁlled with civilians inviolation of international law by putting civilians at unnecessary risk of militaryattacks by the Sri Lankan armed forces.
The most compelling and comprehensive evidence compiled against the
LTTE involved their deliberate positioning of hundreds of heavy vehicles suspectedof containing military equipment within areas densely populated by civilians,
effectively using them as a human shield against potential attack, as well as exposing
civilians to the potential ignition of the vehicle contents. At the end of the conﬂict,
LTTE heavy vehicles were involved in a massive explosive event on the morning of
16 May 2009, producing a zone of total incineration measuring approximately
36,000 m2 in area and destroying an estimated 200 tent shelters. Because of
uncertainty about the estimated civilian population remaining within the NFZ-3
at the time, it was not possible to estimate the potential civilian deaths or injuries
resulting from the explosion.53
50 Video available at: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1529573111?bclid=20223644001&bctid=20379565001 (last visited 3 May 2012).
51 See artillery time series analysis maps in Annex: Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts, above
note 38.
52 It is unlikely that either of these public facilities was functioning at the time; however, the school was later
demolished and as of late 2010 there were no indications that the hospital had been reconstructed.
53 This explosion was detected by the same ﬁre-monitoring sensors used during the Georgian conﬂict(2008).
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J. Lyons – Documenting violations of international humanitarian law from space

Figure 8: PTK hospital (partially destroyed) with Sri Lankan army mortar battery visible on
hospital grounds in lower left (17 June 2009) (Image © GeoEye).

Satellites to the rescue?
As shown through the three case studies of Gaza, Georgia, and Sri Lanka, analysis ofsatellite imagery can often provide independent and compelling evidence in direct
support of war crimes investigations. There are, however, a range of technical limits,
analytical challenges, and political restrictions to the application of imagery for IHL
which must be better understood in order to properly manage expectations of thisexciting ﬁeld of applied humanitarian research.

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Technological limits
The obvious limitation of electro-optical satellite sensors is that they simply
cannot see through clouds, dense tree-cover, or at night, thereby geographically andseasonally limiting their ability to assess or monitor armed conﬂicts in many regionsof the world. Had the ﬁnal months of the Sri Lanka civil war occurred, for example,
during the eastern monsoon season in late 2008 rather than during the dry season inearly 2009, sustained cloud cover would have prevented the use of electro-opticalsensors to provide detailed analysis of the conﬂict.
An increasingly viable alternative source of satellite data in suchcircumstances is the new generation of radar sensors (known as synthetic apertureradar or SAR sensors) that do not have the same weather-based limitations as
standard electro-optical sensors. Because SAR sensors actively map or illuminate
the ground using radar, the derived data can be easily acquired at night, throughheavy clouds, and even, under certain circumstances, through dense vegetation.
Relevant investigative applications could include, for exaample, identifying areas ofsigniﬁcant building damages and conﬂict-related environmental impacts andlocating large concentrations of displaced civilians both on land and sea,54 as wellas the monitoring of conventional military forces.55 Despite these important
advantages in capability, the practical application of SAR data for research bycivilian institutions and NGOs on potential violations of IHL has been limited byseveral important factors. Traditional image interpretation and processing methods
commonly used with electro-optical imagery are not easily transferred to analyticalwork with SAR data because of the complexity of radar signatures. Analysts
possessing such specialized skills are still heavily concentrated within national
military and intelligence agencies and thus less available for equivalent civilian
research. Because of the often dual-use legal agreement underpinning the operationof very high resolution SAR sensors, there are not only signiﬁcantly higher data
costs, but the data is also potentially subject to political restrictions over sensitive
areas.56
One poorly understood but frequently encountered limitation is that very
high resolution (VHR) satellites (including both electro-optical and SAR sensors) do
not collect imagery automatically and continuously over the world, but rather aretasked over speciﬁc areas with known commercial, political, or humanitarian value.
54 SAR sensors are especially well suited for monitoring vessel trafﬁc on open bodies of water, which would
be of speciﬁc value to detailed studies on potential human-trafﬁcking routes, as well as large-scale forced
population displacements by boat.
55 Rob Dekker, et al., ‘Change detection tools’, in Bhupendra Jasani, et al., (eds), Remote Sensing fromSpace – Supporting International Peace and Security, Springer, 2007, pp. 119–140.
56 The German SAR sensor TerraSAR-X is subject to the Satellite Data Security Act (SatDSiG) of 2007,
which restricts civilian access to radar data collected over designated sensitive areas. It is not known at thetime of writing to what extent in practice this policy has actually restricted data access over conﬂict zones.
See ‘German national data security policy for space-based earth remote sensing systems’, 2010, available
at: http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/pdf/pres/lsc2010/tech-02.pdf (last visited June 2012). See also ‘PPP
between DLR and Infoterra the SatDSiG – German Satellite Data Security Act’, 2008, available at: http://
www.gwu.edu/~spi/assets/docs/PPP_DLR_SatDSiG-Datenpolicy_Bernhard.pdf (last visited June 2012).
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J. Lyons – Documenting violations of international humanitarian law from space

This can mean that unreported and unanticipated conﬂicts in remote areas caneasily go undocumented by commercial sensors for weeks or months at a time,leaving little or no relevant evidence of the conﬂict detectable in the available
imagery once it is eventually acquired. There were, in fact, multiple instances
encountered by the UN over the last ﬁve years in which requests for satellite-based
analysis of particular incidents were simply never conducted for lack of relevant
imagery coverage.57
Asymmetrical conﬂicts involving irregular forces, as in Gaza and Sri Lanka,
will continue to present serious technical and analytical challenges. Because of limits
to the resolution of civilian satellite sensors, it will remain exceedingly difﬁcult
to identify the movement or actions of irregular or poorly-armed insurgent groups,
groups which do not possess or are not in a position to deploy conventional
military forces and materials readily identiﬁed from space. Small-unit guerrillaforces ﬁghting within urban environments or under camouﬂage or dense vegetation
canopy will remain largely invisible, posing a general problem of unbalanced focus
on the actions of conventional armed forces.58
Satellite imagery analysis will continue to be limited in its ability to identify
the use of prohibited weapons systems. In Georgia, for example, no meaningful
evidence on the use of cluster munitions by Russian forces in and around the city of
Gori was collected from imagery despite detailed ﬁeld reports from Human Rights
Watch providing the approximate timing and locations of the reported attacks.59
Basic questions regarding the use of white phosphorus artillery shells in Gaza by the
IDF could not be answered for lack of signatures in the imagery, and thus noinsights on the potential legality of their use were possible.
One of the most serious limitations to conducting satellite-based damage
assessments remains a chronic inability to detect damages caused by ground ﬁrefrom tanks, rocket-propelled grenades and low-trajectory artillery. In the case ofTskhinvali, this resulted in an undercount of potentially hundreds of affectedbuilding sites across the city, leading to the risk of a perception of political bias
against South Ossetian forces simply because the arson-related damages theyinﬂicted were more easily and accurately documented. It would be safe to conclude
that the damage assessment maps released by the UN at the time contained unevenlevels of accuracy, with errors of omission spatially concentrated in exactly those
57 Based on the author’s experience at UNITAR/UNOSAT (2005–2012).
58 The only information collected in relation to potentially unlawful acts in Gaza by Hamas was
the identiﬁcation and analysis by UNOSAT of damage to the retaining wall of a sewage treatment
plant that resulted in a massive outﬂow event over 1.2 km long. The Goldstone Report assumed
Israeli forces had been responsible; however, there were no eyewitnesses and little physical evidence. The
Israeli government reviewed the case and concluded that although they could not rule out an accidental
air strike, they thought it could have been committed by Hamas as part of a defensive plan to hamper
the movement of IDF tank forces in the area. If this were the case then it would potentially represent
a violation of customary international law as reﬂected in Article 56 of Protocol I and Article 15
of Protocol II, prohibiting the destruction of installations containing dangerous forces. See‘Gaza operation investigations: an update’, in Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, January 2010, paras.
150–164, available at: http://www.mfa.gov.il/NR/rdonlyres/8E841A98-1755-413D-A1D2-8B30F64022BE/
0/GazaOperationInvestigationsUpdate.pdf (last visited 1 May 2012).
59 Based on the author’s internal UN correspondence with Human Rights Watch, August–September 2009.
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parts of the city that had been most affected by Georgian government shelling
during their offensive in early August 2008. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that thisspeciﬁc limitation will be adequately addressed in the near future despite anticipatedimprovements in sensor technology.

Analytical challenges: ambiguous, inconclusive, and uncertain ﬁndings
It is important to understand that detailed imagery analysis can often result inambiguous, inconclusive, and even politically contested or erroneous ﬁndings.
An example is the largely discredited interpretations of satellite imagery presented by
US Secretary of State Powell at the UN Security Council over alleged chemical andbiological weapon facilities in Iraq during the build-up to the Second Gulf War.60
Analysts can make mistakes, come to widely divergent conclusions about the sameimage, and can even subconsciously shape their ﬁndings to meet preconceived useror organisational expectations. More common are a broader range of circumstances
when complex events occur on the ground and present distinct challenges forthe production of relevant and meaningful satellite-derived information on armed
conﬂict.
One of the primary challenges encountered during the Sri Lankan civil war
was the difﬁculty conﬁrming reports of mortar shelling within the NFZs – clearly an
issue of acute relevance to the Panel of Experts’ investigation. Survival tactics such as
the construction of family wells, latrines, and bomb shelters, as well as the highportability of tents and the associated debris left behind, had the cumulative effectof substantially masking the impact signatures of small- and medium-calibre mortarshells. It was therefore likely that evidence of artillery shelling was differentiallymasked in areas, depending on the relative number of civilian tent shelters,
effectively leaving areas of highest population density with the lowest levels ofshelling evidence.
Uncertainties in image interpretation are commonly encountered incomplex or unfamiliar environments when the temporal coverage of available
imagery is insufﬁcient to capture and reconstruct a series of speciﬁc events on the
ground. Multiple interpretations, each of which is potentially equally probable, may
result in such circumstances, leaving questions of direct humanitarian interest
unanswered. Typically ambiguous cause-and-effect scenarios result from the binary
comparison of two satellite images recorded over a given area, one recorded before
an event and the other after. The objective in this context is to try to determine
exactly what occurred on the ground between these two static snapshots in time.
60 The 2004 US Senate report on US pre-war intelligence on Iraq indicated that when imagery analysts cameto strongly divergent opinions about the signiﬁcance of vehicle activity at the Amiriyah Serum and
Vaccine Institute, there was no mechanism or review process to resolve the conﬂict, allowing theerroneous interpretation of ‘unusual’ activity to go into the Powel presentation. Further, it appears thatimagery analysts may have shaped their ﬁndings on the locations of alleged mobile biological weapons(BW) agent production units to conform to fabricated reports by the informant ‘Curve Ball’. See ‘Reporton the US Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq’, US Senate, 7 July 2004,
pp. 244–256, available at: http://web.mit.edu/simsong/www/iraqreport2-textunder.pdf (last visited June2012).
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When analysis is dependent on a very limited time series of imagery, especiallywhen the ‘pre-imagery’ is recorded months or sometimes even years before, it isprobable that multiple complex events will effectively be compressed into one staticand highly ambiguous overview which is of little value.
A basic question asked of satellite imagery after reports of rebel forces
advancing on a refugee camp, for example, is has the camp been attacked or not?
Although the post-event image may indeed show the absence of tent shelters, it may
not necessarily contain enough details to determine with sufﬁcient conﬁdence
whether rebel forces demolished the shelters during an attack, or if the shelters were
hurriedly packed by ﬂeeing residents in advance of a feared attack. In such complex
and poorly documented circumstances, the relative lack of sufﬁcient satellite
imagery will usually result in ambiguous and inconclusive ﬁndings.61
As is apparent in all three of the case studies, determining likely force
attribution for any given attack based on a narrow inspection of damage signaturescontained in available imagery is often exceedingly difﬁcult and potentiallymisleading. For example, small impact craters identiﬁed on hospital rooftops orin open ﬁelds in Sri Lanka could, if taken in isolation from the wider context,
conceivably have been inﬂicted by either side in the conﬂict. Even large-scale events,
such as the massive explosion during the ﬁnal hours of the Sri Lankan civil war, may
present ambiguous or marginal clues within the imagery insufﬁcient to suggest
which side was likely responsible.

Political restrictions and the future
Since the US government decision in 1994 to authorize the commercializationof essentially military technology, public access to very high resolution satellite
imagery and the proliferation of new and improved sensors has generally proceeded
without signiﬁcant political interference or restrictions.62 There remains, however, anotable exception that continues to adversely impact the use of imagery overimportant conﬂict areas in the Middle East. In 1997 the US government enacted
a law prohibiting the sale or distribution of satellite imagery with under two metre
spatial resolution over Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, as well as
within a ﬁve-kilometre buffer zone into Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon.63
This restriction was directly felt during the Gaza conﬂict in 2009, in that it
forced commercial satellite providers to systematically degrade imagery recorded
over the Gaza Strip to only 25 per cent of the original resolution. In fact, all of the
UN monitoring and analysis work on Gaza for the humanitarian community, andspeciﬁcally for the Goldstone Mission, was based on degraded-quality imagery that
61 A clearly associated risk with the proliferation of satellite imagery use by the humanitarian and NGO
community is that groups may release products out of inexperience, excitement, or pressure to conﬁrm
preconceived expectations that do not necessarily account for this uncertainty or fully communicate it toend users, risking a typical rush to judgement error, as exempliﬁed by the presentation of satellite imagery
interpretations by then US Secretary of State Colin Powell at the UN Security Council in February 2003.
62 See Y. A. Dehqanzada and A. M. Florini, above note 1.
63 National Defence Authorisation Act for Fiscal Year 1997, US Government, 23 September 1996, Sec. 1064.
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had a signiﬁcantly negative impact on overall accuracy and conﬁdence levels.
Although no attempts have been made to quantify the impact, it almost certainly
caused a systematic underestimation of virtually all forms of building andinfrastructure damage across the Gaza Strip.
Although legally this restriction applies only to US satellite sensors, boththe US and Israeli governments have, until recently, successfully secured bilateralagreements with European and Asian satellite companies to adopt similar
restrictions.64 One apparent consequence of recent diplomatic tensions between
Turkey and Israel is that the planned Turkish satellites GökTürk-1 and GökTürk-2
may start by 2013 to acquire and distribute sub-metre resolution imagery over thewhole of Israel and the Palestinian territories.65 If this occurs, it could conceivable
lead to the eventual revision or outright repeal of the US restriction.
One of the potential political consequences of the use of satellite technology
for conﬂict monitoring and analysis is a growing interest of many UN member
states within the Group of 77 to restrict the production and public releaseof satellite-based research on pressing issues of human rights and IHL. Programmes
within the UN system have, in fact, come under pressure from recent agency
guidelines that are increasingly restricting the public dissemination of satellitederived information on armed conﬂicts and major humanitarian emergencies.66
It remains uncertain if these political attempts within the UN system torestrict the use of satellite technology will have a long-term negative impact on theability of the UN to support future investigations. What is certain, however, is thatin the near future the broader humanitarian and human rights community will
increasingly adopt the necessary technical and analytical skills in order to conduct
their own independent satellite-based conﬂict monitoring and analysis.

64 ‘Turkey dismisses Israel’s concerns over satellite’, in Reuters, 11 March 2011, available at: http://www.
reuters.com/article/2011/03/11/turkey-israel-satellites-idUSLDE72A1VM20110311.
See
also‘Göktürk – project of reconnaissance and surveillance satellite system’, Turkish Air Force, available at:
http://www.hvkk.tsk.tr/EN/IcerikDetay.aspx?ID=167&IcerikID=154 (both last visited 5 May 2012).
65 Ibid.
66 Based on internal UN correspondence and private discussions with UN colleagues (2005–2012).
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