A new survey conducted in Iraq by the World Health Organization, working in collaboration with the Iraqi government, estimates the number of Iraqis killed in the war between the 2003 U.S. invasion and June 2006 at about 151,000. The study presents this number as an estimate rather than an exact figure, but says that the margin-of-error of the study suggests that the true number is almost certainly between 104,000 and 223,000.
The WHO estimate differs strongly from two previous well-publicized estimates:
- Iraq Body Count: In June 2006, they estimated the number of civilian deaths as being much lower: under 50,000. (They estimate the current number of civilian Iraqi dead at between 80,585 and 88,004.)
- Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: published in the medical journal Lancet in October 2006, gave a much higher estimate of Iraqi war deaths for approximately the same period: about 655,000.
There are two possible explanations of why the Iraq Body Count’s estimate is less than the WHO estimate:
- The WHO estimate is based on interviews of 9000 Iraqi families, whereas the Iraq Body Count estimate is based on confirmed deaths — reports cross-checked with hospitals and mortuaries. Many deaths in Iraq go unreported.
- The WHO estimate is an estimate of all Iraqi war deaths, whereas the Iraq Body Count estimate includes only non-combatant (i.e., civilian) deaths.
The reasons for the discrepancy between the WHO study and the Johns Hopkins study are less clear. They both used a survey methodology, and they both supposedly included all Iraqi war-dead. It is true, however, that the Johns Hopkins study was based on a smaller sample: about 1800 families, compared to the WHO study’s 9000 families.
Links to various press reports of the WHO estimate:
January 15, 2008 at 6:19 pm |
The Johns Hopkins study was vetted by the British government, and they concluded that its methodology was “robust” and “close to best practice”.
The following article may be found at http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2396031.ece.
British Backtrack on Iraq Death Toll
By Jill Lawless
The Independent UK
Tuesday 27 March 2007
British government officials have backed the methods used by scientists who concluded that more than 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion, the BBC reported yesterday.
The Government publicly rejected the findings, published in The Lancet in October. But the BBC said documents obtained under freedom of information legislation showed advisers concluded that the much-criticised study had used sound methods.
The study, conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, estimated that 655,000 more Iraqis had died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. The study estimated that 601,027 of those deaths were from violence.
The researchers, reflecting the inherent uncertainties in such extrapolations, said they were 95 per cent certain that the real number of deaths lay somewhere between 392,979 and 942,636.
The conclusion, based on interviews and not a body count, was disputed by some experts, and rejected by the US and British governments. But the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, Roy Anderson, described the methods used in the study as “robust” and “close to best practice”. Another official said it was “a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones”.