A Genuinely Credible Estimate

 July 10, 2013 

Kath Noble

Last week, I discussed a report on civilian deaths in the final phase of the war called ‘The Numbers Game‘.

As I said, it shows how the most popular method of estimating the body count – calculating the discrepancy between the population figures given by local officials at various times from October 2008 and the number of IDPsregistered in June 2009 – falls apart when one compares the population figures. They simply can’t all be accurate or even vaguely close to the mark.

But this approach opens up the possibility of much higher totals, so people like Frances Harrison are still perfectly happy to describe its results as ‘credible’.

The author notes that there may well be good reason to doubt the credibility of the other method – based on specific reports of casualties as recorded by the network of informants set up by the United Nations – since at least some people may have died without being seen or without their death being recorded. Not all bodies would have been transported to medical facilities. The author says that this was most likely to have been the case in January and February, when the population was still quite dispersed, and also in May, as fighting became very intense.

To get over this problem, the report works from data on the number of injuries, on the basis that the injured would have all sought help.                              Read More