Crisis in Darfur - Mortality Figures

Mortality Figures

Sudanese authorities claim a death toll of roughly 10,000 civilians.

In September 2004, the World Health Organization estimated that there had been 50,000 deaths in Darfur since the beginning of the conflict, an 18-month period, mostly due to starvation. An updated estimate the following month put the number of deaths for the 6-month period from March to October 2004 due to starvation and disease at 70,000; These figures were criticized, because they only considered short periods and did not include deaths from violence. A more recent British Parliamentary Report has estimated that over 300,000 people have died, and others have estimated even more.

In March 2005, the UN's Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland estimated that 10,000 were dying each month excluding deaths due to ethnic violence. An estimated 2.7 million people had at that time been displaced from their homes, mostly seeking refuge in camps in Darfur's major towns. Two hundred thousand had fled to neighboring Chad. Reports of violent deaths compiled by the UN indicate between 6,000 and 7,000 fatalities from 2004 to 2007.

In May 2005, the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) of the School of Public Health of the Université catholique de Louvain in Brussels, Belgium published an analysis of mortality in Darfur. Their estimate stated that from September 2003 to January 2005, between 98,000 and 181,000 persons had died in Darfur, including 63,000 to 146,000 excess deaths.

On 28 April 2006, Dr. Eric Reeves argued that "extant data, in aggregate, strongly suggest that total excess mortality in Darfur, over the course of more than three years of deadly conflict, now significantly exceeds 450,000," but this has not been independently verified.

The UN disclosed on 22 April 2008 that it might have underestimated the Darfur death toll by nearly 50%.

In July 2009, the Christian Science Monitor published an op-ed stating that many of the published mortality rates have been misleading because they include a large number of people who have died of disease and malnutrition, as well as those who have died from direct violence. Therefore, when activist groups make statements indicating that "four hundred thousand people have been killed," they are misleading the public.

In January 2010, The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters published an article in a special issue of The Lancet. The article, entitled Patterns of mortality rates in Darfur Conflict, estimated, with 95% confidence, that the excess number of deaths is between 178,258 and 461,520 (the mean being 298,271), with 80% of these due to diseases. 51 International peacekeepers have been killed in Darfur.