How many deaths in Darfur?

By Eric Reeves, The Guardian on-line

August 20, 2007 — How many people have died as a result of Khartoum’s genocidal
counter-insurgency campaign in Darfur? What is overall mortality since
February 2003? These questions have been much in the news recently,
particularly in the wake of a decision by Britain’s Advertising
Standards Authority (ASA) that an advertisement by the Save Darfur
Coalition and Aegis Trust had inappropriately represented as fact a
death toll of 400,000, when this was a matter on which opinions
diverged. Notably, the ASA did not find, as erroneously asserted by Sam
Dealey in the New York Times (August 12, 2007), that the advertisement
“violated codes of objectivity and truthfulness.” Nor is the ASA
likely to be the best source for understanding the complexities
attending the competing claims of various mortality estimates, ranging
from Khartoum’s figure of 9,000 to the figure of well over 450,000
generated by this writer.

Why does any of this matter? Here it’s useful to recall that in
February 2004—one year into the most violent and destructive phase of
the Darfur genocide—the official UN estimate for total human mortality
was 3,000. In retrospect this is of course an absurdly low number,
although there certainly was no effort to deceive by the UN. But only
activist efforts—not those of professional epidemiologists—succeeded
in compelling a closer examination of the data available, which were in
fact extremely limited. Activist pressure also helped ensure that
subsequently a significantly wider and more authoritative set of data
would become available, although not always meeting specific
epidemiological standards.

The most controversial data came from a study overseen by the
nongovernmental Coalition for International Justice (CIJ) in August
2004—not “summer of 2003,” as erroneously asserted by Conor Foley
in this space (August 17, 2007). Nor was it a study of “morbidity”
(degrees and extent of illness) as Foley asserts, confusing this basic
term with “mortality.” Rather it was a study designed to determine
whether genocide had occurred in Darfur. Those conducting the 1,136
carefully randomized interviews among Darfuri refugees at various
locations along the Chad/Darfur border were professionals drawn from a
wide range of backgrounds, including law enforcement, previous genocide
investigations, and human rights work. They had extensive resources,
including a full complement of translators.

The overwhelming consensus among the investigators, according to one
genocide scholar on the team, was that genocide had been committed and
was continuing. This was the basis for the US determination rendered by
then-Secretary of State Colin Powell in Congressional testimony of
September 2004. But in addition to making clear the genocidal intent of
the Khartoum regime, the CIJ study also yielded highly significant data
about human mortality in Darfur, if in tantalizingly insufficient form.

The CIJ data is particularly important because of its comprehensiveness
as well as its timeliness: humanitarian organizations have reported that
through summer of 2004 the overwhelming cause of death in Darfur was
violence. At some point, perhaps late summer 2004, the primary causes
of death became disease and malnutrition, often directly related to
antecedent violence, and thus also genocidal deaths. But violence and
its direct effects were the chief causes of death for nearly all the
“look-back period” in the CIJ study.

Three studies have attempted to take account of the CIJ data. All
suggest that present mortality, from all causes, is 350,000-400,000 or
greater. While all have been judged harshly for this use of CIJ data by
the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), the basic statistical
challenge confronting any mortality assessment remains: without
consideration of CIJ data, there is no effective way to calculate
violent mortality on a global basis for Darfur. Because the CIJ study
was not specifically designed as a mortality study, a range of
assumptions must guide use of the data. But unless these assumptions
are shown to be unreasonable—something not attempted by the GAO, the
ASA, or any other investigator—the choice confronting those who would
make a reasonable estimate of total Darfur mortality, including violent
mortality, is stark: make use of the comprehensive CIJ data as
reasonably as possible—or ignore it. The latter decision may result
in greater methodological hygiene; it also ensures that violent
mortality will be very dramatically understated.

We should also consider the time-frame for various assessments. The
conflict in Darfur has now raged for 54 months; indeed, ethnic violence
orchestrated by the Khartoum regime through its Arab militia proxies had
claimed thousands of lives before the standard terminus a quo for the
conflict, February 2003. No study considered by the ASA or the GAO is
temporally inclusive; indeed one study favored by the GAO includes data
that reflect only about one third the duration of the conflict.

Here it is important to understand the consequences of the last UN
World Health Organization study of global mortality rates (published
initially in spring 2005). A senior UN official told this writer at the
time, in emphatic terms, that there would be no further global mortality
studies done because of severe, sometimes violent harassment by
Khartoum. The regime was clearly determined to make global mortality
assessments impossible. And even the 2005 UN data and excess
morality-rate study excluded most of South Darfur state because of
insecurity; yet South Darfur has approximately half the population of
Darfur as a whole.

Clearly there can be no certainty about Darfur mortality totals. But,
for different reasons, we need both an authoritative lower limit and a
credible upper limit. An authoritative “floor figure” for Darfur
mortality was provided by a study published in Science (September 2006),
one of the most distinguished peer-reviewed journals in the world.
Professors John Hagan and Alberto Palloni are authors of the study,
which established the currently most commonly cited figure for Darfur
mortality, 200,000 dead.

The Hagan/Palloni study excluded CIJ data, but used other, more
precise, though less revealing data; this produced a significantly
smaller figure for violent mortality than had appeared in Hagan’s
earlier co-authored study (spring 2005), which estimated that
approximately 400,000 people had died from all causes at that point in
the conflict. But the more astringent study in Science—not considered
by the GAO—concludes with a significant statement about the range of
mortality upwards from the “floor figure” established: “It is
likely that the number of deaths for this conflict in Greater Darfur is
higher than 200,000 individuals, and it is possible that the death toll
is much higher.” Hagan declared to the New York Times (September 15,
2006), “We could easily be talking about 400,000 deaths.”

Using primarily CIJ and UN World Health Organization data, this writer
has concluded that, as of April 2006, upwards of 450,000 people had died
(http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article102.html). An assessment of this
work was offered at the time by the member of the GAO panel most
experienced working in Darfur, Francesco Checchi of the London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Checchi declared of my estimate that it
is “‘mathematically correct’ and ‘sufficiently legitimate’ to
establish a high-end count.”

Why should we care about credible estimates for either a lower or upper
range? Without a solid lower estimate of the sort provided by Hagan and
Palloni in their Science article, there was no real corrective to
previously common news misreporting of “tens of thousands of deaths
in Darfur.” But without a credible upper estimate of human mortality
in Darfur we risk seeing a reprise of Rwanda, where mortality was
underestimated in ways that worked to sustain international paralysis in
the face of a cataclysm of human destruction that claimed some 800,000
lives.

400,000 deaths in Darfur is a fully credible estimate. If not
demonstrable fact, it is far more than mere “opinion.”

* Eric Reeves is author of A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the
Darfur Genocide. He can be reached at [email protected]. www.sudanreeves.org