Defense Base Act injury and death claims
Data > Defense Base Act injury and death claims
US Department of Labor counts of Defense Base Act claims filed for civilian contractors injured or killed on US government contracts overseas, by country and fiscal year, FY2009 to FY2024, with the Department's cumulative table for 2001 to 2024.
Download the dataset (90 KB, zip, from Zenodo) · Code and documentation
| Source | US Department of Labor |
|---|---|
| Covers | FY2009 to FY2024, and 2001 to 2024 combined |
| Size | 1,433 rows, one per country per year |
| Format | CSV, with a documentation file and the code that builds it |
| Version | 1.0.0, published 28 October 2026 |
| Licence | CC BY 4.0 (code: MIT) |
| DOI | 10.5281/zenodo.23746798 (all versions) · 10.5281/zenodo.23746799 (this version) |
What it is
The Defense Base Act is a United States law requiring insurance for civilian employees working overseas on United States government contracts. When one of them is injured or killed, a claim is filed, and the Department of Labor counts those claims by country and year. Official casualty figures usually cover only soldiers, so these tables are one of the few public records of harm to civilian contractors: more than 235,000 claims since 2001, including about 4,200 death claims.
The tables were spread across many separate web pages and spreadsheets, with country names spelled differently from year to year. This dataset brings them into one checked file. It can be used to see where and when contract work abroad has been most dangerous, and to follow how that risk changed as wars ended.
What it cannot be used to say
- These are claims, not casualties. The Department of Labor states that the numbers are not official casualty statistics and do not show the number of injuries or deaths in the period.
- The year is when the case was opened, not when the injury happened. Afghanistan still has thousands of claims in the 2024 financial year, after the 2021 withdrawal.
- The country is where the injury happened, not the worker's nationality.
- A blank cell is not zero. The Department leaves small numbers out of its tables, so adding up the countries gives less than the published year total. The yearly totals file has the official totals.
- The yearly tables were not revised later, so they do not always add up to the newer cumulative table.
- It covers civilian contract work of every kind, including construction, logistics and translation, not only security work.
How it was checked
- The tables were copied cell by cell from the Department of Labor's pages and spreadsheets, and the copy was verified with a checksum.
- Each year's countries were compared with the total printed for that year; where they differ, the gap equals the claims in cells the source leaves blank.
- Each row's case types were checked against its total, and the yearly tables were compared with the cumulative table.
What is in the file
Files
| File | Contents |
|---|---|
data/clean/dba_claims_by_country_year.csv | One row per country per year (1,433 rows) |
data/clean/dba_claims_year_totals.csv | The total printed for each year, and for 2001-2024 |
data/clean/dba_claims_cumulative_2001_2024.csv | The cumulative table, one row per country |
Columns
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
fiscal_year | U.S. fiscal year the case was opened (starts 1 October) |
country | Standard country name (spellings vary between years in the source) |
country_in_source | The name exactly as printed |
no_lost_time | Cases with no time lost from work |
lost_time_3_days_or_less | Lost time of 3 days or less |
lost_time_4_days_or_more | Lost time of 4 days or more |
death | Death cases |
salary_continuation | Cases where the employer may be continuing pay |
other | Other cases |
total | All cases |
source_url | The Labor Department page or file the row comes from |
Cite
Azom, Kazi Affnann (2026). contractor-injury-claims: U.S. Defense Base Act claims by country, FY2009-FY2024 (Version v1.0.0) [Data set]. Mercenomics. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23746799
The DOI above is for version 1.0.0. To always point to the latest version, use 10.5281/zenodo.23746798. Found an error? Report it on the Corrections page.