Current Mortality Rates, Statistical Inferences
Eric Reeves
July 6, 2004

What is the level of current human destruction in Darfur? How many
people have already died? For months the UN has offered the figure of
10,000---with no account of methodology or explanation of the meaning of
this figure. Given the vast numbers defining the crisis in Darfur and
Chad, this seems both implausibly low and disturbingly static. 2.2
million people are now defined by the US, the UN, and the European Union
as "war-affected. The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is using
documents internally that indicate a refugee population in Chad of over
180,000 people (and this almost certainly still understates the
population significantly). 1.1 million have been internally displaced
in Darfur.

How likely is it that following 17 months of conflict, vast violent
displacement, mass executions, and growing severe malnutrition and
disease, a figure of 10,000 dead is of any real use in quantifying
realities in Darfur? We may ask this question in the context of a
number of reports, findings, and other data. Some of the most
significant are briefly noted and assessed below.

Asma Jahangir, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or
arbitrary executions, reported recently that the "number of black
Africans killed by Arab militias in the Darfur region of Sudan is 'bound
to be staggering'":

"Ms. Jahangir said that during her visit, 'nearly every third or fourth
family' she spoke to in the camps for internally displaced people (IDPs)
within Darfur had lost a relative to the militias. 'It's very hard to
say [accurately] how many people have been killed,' she said, but
interviews with IDPs indicated it would be 'quite a large number. They
are bound to be staggering.'" (UN News Centre, June 29, 2004)

This finding alone indicates a huge number of dead---certainly many
times the figure of 10,000 if we may take as statistically
representative Ms. Jahangir's finding that, "'nearly every third or
fourth family' she spoke to in the camps for internally displaced people
within Darfur had lost a relative to the militias."

Doctors Without Border/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has also recently
released important epidemiological research on violence committed
against the African populations of Darfur:

"A recent survey conducted by MSF and the epidemiological research
center Epicentre in the town of Mornay, West Darfur State, where nearly
80,000 people have sought refuge, found that one in 20 people were
killed in scorched earth attacks on 111 villages from September 2003
until February 2004. Adult men were the primary victims, but women and
children were also killed. Today, one in five children in the camp are
severely malnourished while irregular and insufficient food
distributions do not come close to meeting the basic needs of people
weakened by violence, displacement, and deprivation." (Doctors Without
Border/Medecins Sans Frontieres, "Emergency in Darfur, Sudan: No Relief
in Sight," June 21, 2004; release at
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/pr/2004/06-21-2004.shtml).)

If we make the very conservative assumption that the Mornay region has
been especially violent, and that the 1 in 20 figure overstates by 50%
the global death rate for armed killings in Darfur, this still implies
(for a displaced population of 1.3 million) that over 40,000 people had
been violently killed between September 2003 and February 2004 (this
represents a weekly casualty figure of approximately 1,600). In the
more than four months (18 weeks) since the end of February, violent
killings have continued to be reported on a very wide-scale throughout
Darfur, especially in March and April, subsiding recently only because
the destruction of African villages is now largely completed. Many
people were of course killed violently before September 2003 (the
insurgency conflict broke out in February 2003; Janjaweed attacks on
civilians accelerated dramatically in the late spring of 2003). These
data aggregated (including the implied weekly casualty rate) suggest a
very approximate figure of 80,000 killed violently in the course of the
war.

For the past three months, according to data from the US Agency for
International Development
(http://www.usaid.gov/locations/sub-saharan_africa/sudan/cmr_darfur.pdf),
mortality from malnutrition and disease has been rising for the larger
population of "war-affected" (2.2 to 2.3 million). The Global Mortality
Rate has moved from 1 death per day per 10,000 (early May) to 3 per day
per 10,000 (early June) to 4 deaths per day per 10,000 (currently).
During these approximately thirteen weeks alone, mortality from
malnutrition and disease in the larger "war-affected" population is
approximately 40,000.

These data (and the numerical conclusion) are supplemented by recent
predictions of disease mortality from the UN's World Health
Organization, predictions that are already relevant to estimates of
current mortality levels:

"Some 10,000 people in Darfur could die of cholera and dysentery in
July alone unless a massive aid operation can be set up to helicopter in
food and medicines. 'We anticipate that if things go ahead as at the
moment, 10,000 people will die in the next month,' David Nabarro, head
of the World Health Organization's unit for health action in crises,
told a news briefing in Geneva after a trip to Darfur." (Reuters, July
2, 2004)

The World Health Organization also warned that,

"A cholera epidemic could break out within weeks now that heavy rains
have begun, striking 200,000 to 300,000 of the more than one million
displaced in the troubled western area of Sudan, a top WHO official told
a news briefing. Cholera is an extreme form of watery diarrhoea which
killed tens of thousands of Rwandans who fled genocide in 1994,
according to the WHO. Dysentery, a bloody form of diarrhoea which is
harder to treat, and malaria, a mosquito-borne disease, would be
expected to follow in August." (Reuters, July 2, 2004)

Malaria---an often fatal disease among weakened populations---is also
already claiming lives, as the rains have produced numerous ponds that
are the breeding grounds for the mosquitoes that carry the disease (and
much more readily in crowded camp conditions). The UN has recently
reported a sharp uptick in malaria cases.

CONCLUSION

Given the severe limits on humanitarian access, more global assessments
of various populations in the three Darfur states have not been
undertaken. The data above are representative of all that we have. But
given the scale of the human catastrophe in Darfur, and the thoroughly
implausible figure of 10,000 offered by the UN, statistical inferences
concerning current total mortality are demanded.

The data above, in aggregate, yield a total civilian mortality figure
to date of approximately 120,000.

Eric Reeves
Smith College