Lives and statistics: Are 90% of war victims civilians?

Survival

Volumn 52, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 115-136

  Roberts, Adam ^a  

^a BALLIOL COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 77953473395     PISSN: 00396338     EISSN: 14682699     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2010.494880     Document Type: Article

References (75)

1. Javier Solana, EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, A Secure Europe in a Better World: European Security Strategy (Paris: European Union Institute for Security Studies, 2003), p. 5, http://www.iss.europa.eu/uploads/media/solanae.pdf. This document, proposed by Javier Solana, was adopted by the Heads of State and Government at the European Council in Brussels on 12 December 2003.
2. See the 1949 Geneva Convention IV, Article 4; and the 1977 Geneva Protocol I, Article 50.
3. th Century, 3rd ed., Occasional Paper 29 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Peace Studies Program, 2006), pp. 3-5.
4. See Francesco Checchi and Les Roberts, "Documenting Mortality in Crises: What Keeps Us From Doing Better?', PLoS Medicine, vol. 5, no. 7, July 2008, http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050146
5. Francesco Checchi, "Comment: Estimating the Number of Civilian Deaths from Armed Conflicts', The Lancet, vol. 375, no. 9,711, 23 January 2010, pp. 255-7.
6. See, for example, the online journal Conflict and Health, including materi- als from a conference in Brussels on 6-7 November 2008 on documenting mortality in complex emergencies, http://www.conflictandhealth.com/content/3/1/2.
7. See also the thematic series "Methods for Health Surveys in Difficult Settings' in the online journal Emerging Themes in Epidemiology,http://www.ete-online.com/content/4/1/13.
8. On the thinness of data on civilian victims of contemporary wars see Michael Brzoska, "Collective Violence Beyond the Standard Definition of Armed Conflict', SIPRI Yearbook 2007 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 94-106.
9. Christer Ahlström, with contributions by Kjell-A °ke Nordquist, Casualties of Conflict: Report for the World Campaign for the Protection of Victims of War (Uppsala: Department of Peace and Conflict Research, 1991), p. 19. Note their caveats on p. 17 about difficulties of data collection in conflicts.
10. Ibid., p. 1.
11. The main sources cited for figures on deaths in war are two articles by Karin Lindgren and colleagues: "Major Armed Conflicts in 1988', SIPRI Yearbook 1989 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 339-55
12. "Major Armed Conflicts in 1989', SIPRI Yearbook 1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 393-419.
13. This problem was noted in an article by Kristine Eck of the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, called 'The Urban Myth" About Civilian War Deaths', in Human Security Report Project at the Human Security Centre, Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia, The Human Security Report 2005 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), Part II, p. 75, available at http://www.humansecurityreport.org.
14. See, for example, Alex P. Schmid, Research on Gross Human Rights Violations, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Center for the Study of Social Conflicts, 1989), p. 65.
15. Ruth Leger Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures 1991 (Washington DC: World Priorities, 1991), p. 20. On her methodology.
16. Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures 1993, pp. 20-2.
17. The Human Security Report 2005, p. 75.
18. Karin Lindgren, Birger Heldt, Kjell-Åke Nordquist and Peter Wallensteen, "Major Armed Conflicts in 1990', SIPRI Yearbook 1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 349.
19. Graça Machel, "Impact of Armed Conflict on Children', UN doc. A/51/306, 26 August 1996, para. 24, http://www.unicef.org/graca/graright.htm.
20. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Human Development Report 1998: Consumption for Human Development (New York: UNDP, 1998), p. 35, available at http:// hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr1998.
21. Kofi Annan, "Intervention', Ditchley Foundation Lecture, 26 June 1998,
22. http://www.ditchley.co.uk/page/173/lecture-xxxv.htm.
23. Dan Smith, The State of War and Peace Atlas (London: Penguin Books, 1997), pp. 14, 24-5, 100.
24. Mary Kaldor, "Introduction', in Kaldor and Basker Vashee (eds), Restructuring the Global Military Sector, vol. 1, New Wars (London: Pinter, 1997), p. 8.
25. Ibid., p. 9.
26. The only sources she cites for the information in the table are Smith, State of War and Peace Atlas Ruth Leger Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures 1996 (Washington DC: World Priorities, 1996).
27. Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), p. 8. This passage is unchanged in the second edition (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006, p. 9).
28. Ibid., p. 100, and unchanged in the second edition, p. 107.
29. In a footnote in both editions she cites two sources for this claim: for the earlier figures, she cites Smith, State of War and Peace Atlas.
30. while the figure for the 1990s is said to be her 'own calculation', citing her 'Introduction' to Kaldor and Vashee, Restructuring the Global Military Sector. In June 2009 she advised the present author that in the figures cited there was no distinction drawn between direct and indirect casualties, and that there was generally a shortage of proper statistics in the field.
31. See, for example, Stathis Kalyvas, ""New" and "Old" Civil Wars: A Valid Distinction?', World Politics, vol. 54, no. 1, October 2001, pp. 99-118.
32. Randolph Martin, "An Introduction o NGO Field Security', in Kevin M. Cahill (ed.), Emergency Relief perations (New York: Fordham niversitty Press, 2003), p. 227. While sources are given for numbers of refu- gees and IDPs, none are cited for the eneral proposition about the increase in civilian casualties.
33. Paul Collier, et al., Breaking the Conflict rap: Civil War and Development Policy Washington DC: World Bank, 2003), p. 17.
34. International Committee of the ed Cross, Arms Availability and the Situation of Civilians in Armed Conflict: A Study Presented by the ICRC (Geneva: ICRC, 1999), pp. 3-4, http://www.icrc. org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/p0734.
35. C.J.L. Murray, G. King, A.D. Lopez,. Tomijima and E.G. Krug, 'Armed Conflict as a Public Health Problem', BMJ, vol. 324, no. 7,333, 9 February 2002, pp. 346-9, http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/324/7333/346.
36. Human Security Report 2005, pp. 15-16.
37. Eck, "The "Urban Myth"; About ivilian War Deaths', p. 75.
38. th Century, pp. 6-8.
39. Ziad Obermeyer, Christopher J.L. Urray and Emmanuela Gakidou, "Fifty Years of Violent War Deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia: Analysis of ata from the World Health Survey Programme', BMJ, vol. 336, no. 7,659, 2008, pp. 1,482-6, http://www.bmj.com/cgi/reprint/336/7659/1482. In comparing casualties of post-Cold War conflicts with those in earlier eriods, the study omitted consider- ation of certain major wars, including the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88.
40. Michael Spagat, Andrew Mack, Tara Cooper and Joakim Kreutz, "Estimating War Deaths: An Area of Contestation', Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 53, no. 6, December 2009, pp. 934-50, http://www.hsrgroup.org/images/stories/Documents/JCR_EstimatingWarDeaths.pdf.
41. Jan Zwierzchowski and Ewa Tabeau, "The 1992-95 War in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Census-based Multiple System Estimation of Casualties' Undercount', paper for International Research Workshop on 'The Global Economic Costs of Conflict', Berlin, 1-2 February 2010, pp. 1 and 18-21, http://www.diw.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=diw_01.c.338475.en.
42. Figures from the 2007 report are available at the Bosnian-language website of the Research and Documentation Centre, Sarajevo, http://www.idc.org.ba.
43. Follow the links to 'Ljudski gubici u BiH 1991-1995' and 'Bosna i Hercegovina'; PowerPoint slide 4 provides summaries of the statistics. (The Centre's research on Bosnian war casualties was previously avail-able in English at http://www.idc.org.ba/presentation/index.htm.).
44. The executive summary of the team's report contained several notes of cau- tion about the statistics. For a useful short account, see "Justice Report: Bosnia's Book of the Dead', Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, 21 June 2007, http://www.birn.eu.com/en/88/10/3377/.
45. Zwierzchowski and Tabeau, "The 1992-95 War in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Census-based Multiple System Estimation of Casualties' Undercount', p. 16, Table 5b.
46. See also the earlier ICTY estimate in Ewa Tabeau and Jakub Bijak, "War-related Deaths in the 1992-1995 Armed Conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Critique of Previous Estimates and Recent Results', European Journal of Population, vol. 21, nos 2-3, June 2005, p. 207.
47. Figures available at the Iraq Body Count website, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/.
48. Figures available at Brookings Institution's Iraq Index website, http://www.brookings.edu/saban/iraq-index.aspx.
49. Louise Roug and Doug Smith, "War's Iraqi Death Toll Tops 50,000', Los Angeles Times, 25 June 2006, http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jun/25/world/fg-deathtoll25. The report indicated that the total was probably an underes- timate because of certain lapses in the recording of deaths in Iraq.
50. Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy and Les Roberts, "Mortality after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cross-sectional Cluster Sample Survey', The Lancet, vol. 368, no. 9,545, 21 October 2006, pp. 1421-8, http://brusselstribunal.org/pdf/lancet111006.pdf.
51. See, for example, the correspondence, including a reply by the authors, in The Lancet, vol. 369, no. 9,556, 13 January 2007, pp. 101-5. For longer critiques.
52. see Hamit Dardagan, John Sloboda and Josh Dougherty, "Reality Checks: Some Responses to the Latest Lancet Estimates', Iraq Body Count Press Release, 16 October 2006, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyond/reality-checks
53. Beth Osborne Daponte, "Wartime Estimates of Iraqi Civilian Casualties', International Review of the Red Cross, vol. 89, no. 868, December 2007, pp. 943-57, available at http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/review.
54. Full information about the AAPOR decision to reprimand Burnham is available at http://www.aapor.org/uploads/AAPOR_Press_Releases/BurhnamDetailWebsite.pdf.
55. In recent years, further serious questions have been raised about the methodology and conclusions of the Lancet survey. See, for example, Michael Spagat, "Ethical and Data-integrity Problems in the Second Lancet Survey of Mortality in Iraq', Defence and Peace Economics, vol. 21, no. 1, February 2010, pp. 1-41.
56. For discussion of a survey by Opinion Research Business, a British firm, published in September 2007 and claiming to show that there had been '1.2 million murders in Iraq' since the US-led invasion in March 2003, see Michael Spagat and Josh Dougherty, "Conflict Deaths in Iraq: A Methodological Critique of the ORB Survey Estimate', Survey Research Methods, vol. 4, no. 1, 2010, pp. 3-15, plus the discussion of the article at pp. 17-19. Both are available at http://w4.ub.uni-konstanz.de/srm.
57. Iraq Family Health Survey Study Group, "Violence-related Mortality in Iraq from 2002 to 2006', New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 358, 31 January 2008, available at www.nejm.org.
58. These ratios are merely informed guesses based on an assumption that combatant deaths in Iraq from March 2003 to June 2006 were somewhere between 25,000 and 50,000.
59. This ratio is based on an estimate of just under 75% civilian casualties contained in calculations by Professor John Sloboda of Iraq Body Count and given to the present author on 8 March 2010. It relates to conflict- related violent deaths in Iraq in the period from June 2003 to August 2007. The period was selected because US Department of Defense figures were available for these months, showing a total of 18,832 insurgents and 4,216 Coalition troops killed. A conserva- tive figure of 5,000 Iraqi Army deaths was assumed, making a total of 28,048 combatant deaths. During this period the number of civilian deaths recorded by Iraq Body Count was 76,699: this total includes 5,448 deaths of regular Iraqi Police, who were all counted as civilians.
60. On Sri Lanka, estimates of direct deaths in the area of 70,000-100,000 have been given, usually without comparing civilian and military deaths. Useful sources include the 'Latest Timelines' and 'Human Security' sec- tions for Sri Lanka on the IISS Armed Conflict Database, available at http:// www.iiss.org/publications/armedconflict-database/.
61. Jorge A. Restrepo and Michael Spagat, Colombia's Tipping Point?', Survival, vol. 47, no. 2, Summer 2005, p. 140, Table 3.
62. On Cambodia, an estimate of 1.6-2.2 million deaths is given in Ewa Tabeau and Jan Zwierzchowski, "A New Compilation of Results on Casualties of the 1992-95 War in Bosnia and Herzegovina and 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia', paper presented at a conference on 'Casualty Recording and Estimation', Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 23-4. October 2009, p. 28. Although the authors did not specifically com-pare civilian and military deaths in Cambodia, in the period covered the number of military victims in hostili- ties was very small compared with the number of victims of regime violence.
63. Estimates for the deaths in the wanda genocide in 1994 are between 500,000 and just over 1 million, with a figure of 800,000 being widely used.
64. Such estimates do not generally refer to deaths in the civil war hostilities of 1990-94 between the government and he Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).
65. Benjamin Coghlan et al., Mortality n the Democratic Republic of Congo: An Ongoing Crisis (New York: nternational Rescue Committee, 2008), pp. ii and 16, http://www.theirc.org/sites/default/files/resourcefile/2006-7_congoMortalitySurvey.pdf.
66. The survey, conducted from January 2006 to April 2007 and released in January 2008, noted the devastat- ing effect of wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on the civilian population. It estimated that 5.4m people had died as a con- sequence of the fighting in the DRC between 1998 and 2007, and that 90% of the victims perished from warexacerbated disease, malnutrition, or other causes, rather than violence. For an argument that the 5.4m figure is too high, and a critique of the ethodology behind it, see Human Security Report Project at the School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University, Human Security Report 2009: The Shrinking Costs of War, pp. 4-5 and 36-43, available at http://www.humansecurityreport.org.
67. See WHO and Uganda Ministry f Health, Health and Mortality urvey Among Internally Displaced ersons in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader Districts, Northern Uganda (Geneva and Kampala: WHO, 2006), http://www.who.int/hac/crises/uga/sitreps/Ugandamortsurvey.pdf.
68. See Olivier Degomme and Debarati uha-Sapir, "Patterns of Mortality Rates in Darfur Conflict', The Lancet, vol. 375, no. 9,711, 23 January 2010, pp. 294-300.
69. Human Security Report 2009, pp. 15-16, 18, 24.
70. Figures for landmine victims are difficult to determine, as research- ers carrying out data collection themselves emphasise. Here I have used those in the editions of Landmine Monitor Report for 2003, 2007 and 2008, available on the International Campaign to Ban Landmines website, http://www.icbl.org/lm.
71. In April 2009 I compared and cross-checked these against data supplied by Ted Paterson, Head of Evaluation and Policy Research at the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining; and by the World Bank's Landmine Contamination, Casualties and Clearance Database, which is not yet publicly available.
72. ICBL notes that these figures may be incomplete, and that "it is even possible that 2008 will be the first year since 2005 in which there is no decrease in the casualty rate compared to the previous year'. Landmine Monitor Report 2009, October 2009, p. 49, http:// lm.icbl.org/lm/2009/res/Landmines_Report_2009.pdf.
73. In November 2009 an international practitioner network was established 'to build the technical and institutional capacity, as well as the political will, to record details of every single victim of violent conflict, worldwide'. See the website of the Oxford Research Group, http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/projects/recording_casualties_armed_conflict.
74. Christopher Y. Olivola and Namika Sagara, "Distributions of Observed Death Toll Sensitivity to Human Fatalities', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, vol. 106, no. 52, 29 December 2009, p. 22,151.
75. Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, Small Arms Survey 2002: Counting the Human Cost (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 158.