Our insight was clear: in times of war, civilian casualties are a result of choices, not accidents. For that, we created a powerful concept: In war there are no accidents. There are decisions.

This message was developed in an online video, which showed the story of Ali, a child living in a country at war. He couldn’t be a child “like the ones on the news”, that’s why we follow him through his ordinary routine, making him someone like us, a child that could be our son, our friend or us. In the end, no matter what he does, the careless decision-making of those in power has a devastating effect on his life. A simple story that shows clearly the difference between an accident, and a decision that should be condemned. It’s a choice to respect the rules of war that can protect civilians, and save lives.

We created a 1’ 45” online film that was released November 6th 2017. The film was shot in Beirut, using street casting in order to be as faithful to reality as possible.

The film was distributed through ICRC’s own digital platforms (Facebook and Twitter) and each delegation of the Red Cross’ own YouTube channels, all around the world. In total, more than 90 delegations in different countries broadcasted the film, which was translated to more than 10 different languages to make sure the message reached as far as possible.

We also created a microsite that the film would link to, where we explained clearly for the average audience what the rules of war are, why are they important, and how they could help ensure that they were respected by their own countries: http://bit.ly/2yqUQak

Production costs were around 81k.

In total, the film got 13.5 million impressions, with 4.9 million views and 68K interactions (between likes, shares and comments). Almost 300 thousand reproductions were 100% fully views, watched from the beginning to the end of the film.

We went from almost zero knowledge about the Geneva Conventions, to more than 50 thousand viewers who went to ICRC webpage directly from the link on film, receiving further information about the Rules of War.