The Gaza War: Counting the Human Cost
Massive human carnage undercuts the simple graphics here. One can try to understand the grief and pain of some of the people and their survivors underneath the illustrations. But human imagination is limited.
NGO Every accident counts Works to ensure that “every life lost in armed conflict is promptly recorded, accurately identified, and publicly acknowledged”.
In this context, we can take at least some solace from the massive effort to name one by one the names of those killed in the Gaza war.
The Israelis have prepared a list Citizens, Military and police officers And tried to tell a story about each one.
The Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH) released six lists Gazans were killedincluding their names, ages, genders and ID numbers.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Health has not followed the example of the Gaza MOH in sharing a detailed list of the dead. They are only releasing numbers. As the rate of people killed in the Gaza war increases, it will be increasingly challenging to keep accurate records.
The sheer speed of the number of people killed in the Gaza war, Israeli attacks on hospitals and, by extension MoH data collections, stops The Collection of old casualty data in real time.
Furthermore, the MoH cannot pause to tell the story about each victim, though other groups is emerged To fulfill this requirement. And in recent months, the MoH has made substantial improvements Quality List of its dead and clarified its work methods.
A key question surrounding MoH reporting has long been the gap between the number of deaths listed individually in detailed MoH lists and the total number of deaths claimed by the MoH for the respective time periods.
The MoH list, which covers deaths between October 7 and March 31, has about 11,000 deaths. less than official MoH figures covering the same time period. The MoH managed to cut across this gap 6,400 As of August 31, but 6,400 is still too large a number to merit closer scrutiny.
The gap first appeared in November 2023, when some hospitals were under attack or overwhelmed with patients. Now M.H States that during this period it often tried to count only the unknown number of dead bodies in the Gaza war.
Although the post-November comprehensive list included many vaguely identified individuals (such as persons with invalid IDs or persons of no recorded age), the MoH decided to put the headcount of bodies not included in the comprehensive list into a separate category entirely.
At that point, the official MoH death toll in the Gaza War totaled a detailed list and tally of entries in headcounted deaths (“the gap”).
In November the MoH also introduced a publicly available form through which Gazans can report deaths they are aware of. Submission of such a report initiates the verification process and checks whether the reported death has already appeared in the MoH list.
Thus, certified and unlisted deaths become listed deaths, and the MoH can subtract one death from the gap. Contrary to some statements by the MoH officials, it appears that they clear all verified deaths reported through the form, for which the victims were hospitalized.
Further clarification of MoH procedures would be welcome, but my current view is that the official death toll released by the MoH related to the Gaza war, currently approx. 42,000 Gazans, however, are far below the actual death toll.
It’s hard to say how low, but it’s easy to tell when it’s not growing.
Dr. Michael Spagat is Professor of Economics at Royal Holloway University of London. He is the chair of Every Casualty Count, and former chair of Action on Armed Violence. He has written extensively on the quantitative analysis of war.
Originally published under Creative Commons by 360 informationâ„¢.