Challenging a number of widely held assumptions about global trends in wartime violence, this report reveals that nationwide mortality rates actually fall during most wars.
Several interrelated long-term changes have been driving this counterintuitive development: i) The average war today is fought by smaller armies and impacts less territory than conflicts of the Cold War era.
ii) Dramatic long-term improvements in public health in the developing world.
iii) Major increases in the level, scope, and effectiveness of humanitarian assistance to war-affected populations in countries in conflict. These findings stand in sharp contrast to the images of contemporary warfare presented in the media that focus primarily on a relatively small number of wars that have huge reported death tolls--Iraq, Darfur, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are cases in point. The high death toll estimates in Iraq and Darfur have become a source of intense controversy. But, the survey-based claim by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) that an astonishing 5.4 million people have died as a consequence of the fighting in the DRC has attracted almost no public criticism. However, in what is the most comprehensive analysis to date of the IRC's methodology, we demonstrate that the IRC's 5.4 million estimate is far too high. We further argue that estimating excess war deaths--which include those from war-exacerbated disease and malnutrition, as well as war-related injuries--is a task so fraught with challenges that it can rarely succeed. |