CIVIC: Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict

CIVIC was founded in 2003 by Marla Ruzicka – a young activist and humanitarian who realized the need for an organization focused on the plight of civilians harmed in war.

In 2001, just weeks after the war began in Afghanistan, Marla traveled to a hospital there and to refugee camps in Pakistan. She noted that no one, including the U.S. military, was keeping count or helping civilians harmed. After organizing a door-to-door survey of the Afghan people, she took her results to Washington. An aid on the Senate Appropriations Committee would later say: “She’d actually seen what we’d only read about, namely U.S. bombs dropped in the wrong place, which had wiped out whole communities. Marla gave us on-the-ground information about these people and told us that nothing was being done to help them.”

As a new war in Iraq unfolded, Marla moved to Baghdad. Within months, she was among the few westerners who stayed, continuing to do what she could to get help to families devastated in the conflict. In 2003, Marla founded Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) – creating an organization to take on what she herself was doing with the help solely of volunteers. With Senator Leahy, Marla helped create the first-ever US-funded aid programs dedicated specifically helping rebuild the lives of civilians unintentionally harmed by US combat operations.

Following Marla’s tragic passing as a result of a suicide bomb in Baghdad in April 2005, her colleagues, friends and family knew that CIVIC held a unique place in the advocacy community that should not be left vacant. CIVIC began a new life built on Marla’s extraordinary legacy.
Firmly grounded in its successes to establish smarter, more compassionate US policies for war victims, CIVIC expanded its mandate in early 2007 beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.

A unique organization among those working on human rights, justice and aid in war, CIVIC took on the ambitious goal of pressing all parties engaged in conflict to establish a new standard of behavior by providing recognition and help to civilians harmed by their bombs and bullets. CIVIC sees civilian suffering as a global, historic phenomenon that must now change.

Together with a vast network of government and military officials, humanitarians, advocates, journalists, and volunteers, CIVIC is a voice for war victims the world over.