A claim by the senior UN official in charge of humanitarian relief that up to 300,000 people have died in Darfur, in western Sudan, since fighting erupted there in 2003 has reignited controversy over whether mortality figures are being deliberately inflated, or understated, for political reasons.
John Holmes, a former British diplomat who is now UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, gave the new estimated figure in a report to the Security Council last week. The previous UN estimate for deaths from all causes, including disease, malnutrition, reduced life expectancy and direct combat, was 200,000.
The 50 percent increase in total fatalities has reportedly surprised UN agencies and NGOs operating in Darfur. The crisis, in which 2.7 million people have been displaced, has turned into the world’s biggest relief operation involving 14,000 humanitarian workers and an annual cost of $800 million (£400 million). Such continuing high mortality levels, if accurate, would suggest their work has had little impact.
Sudan’s Islamic government has strongly objected to Holmes’ new total. Mustafa Osman Ismail, an adviser to President Omar Bashir, said the figure was unfounded and designed to pressure Khartoum’s leadership. Sudan is under US sanctions and is accused by Western countries of causing the crisis and hindering attempts to alleviate it.
“This is a report that lacked professionalism and which is not based on any documentation,” Ismail said. “If they continue adding to those figures, one day they will come up with a number that will exceed the whole population of Darfur.”
The Sudanese government’s own official total of about 10,000 deaths since 2003 is widely dismissed as unrealistic. But Khartoum says it has only counted people killed in fighting. It argues that due to the relief effort and, for example, an absence of epidemics, Darfur’s 6 million population is actually healthier overall than inhabitants of southern Sudan and some sub-Saharan countries.
Holmes later conceded that the 300,000 total “is not a very scientifically based figure” due to lack of new mortality studies. He said it was a “reasonable extrapolation” from the earlier UN estimate of 200,000. But that figure, put forward in March 2005 by the then UN emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland, has also been challenged as too high in some quarters.
In a study of ongoing mortality trends in Darfur published in August last year by the independent New York-based Social Science Research Council, Alex de Waal, a leading Sudan expert and disaster demographer, said the US General Accounting Office (GAO) had reviewed all relevant mortality surveys since 2003. The GAO concluded the most reliable was that conducted by the World Health Organization-affiliated Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) in Brussels. Figures produced by CRED suggest that between 125,000 and 141,000 people died between 2003 and 2005. About one in five deaths were directly due to violence. De Waal says this estimate “remains the best to date” while stressing that there is “no certainty in these figures ... the reality could be different”.
Noting that it is common during protracted humanitarian crises for mortality rates in displaced populations to be lower than pre-crisis levels (due to relief intervention and lower fertility rates), De Waal says the period since 2004 has seen a typical falling off of noncombat mortalities in Darfur.
Regarding numbers specifically killed in fighting, De Waal adds: “Since the end of the major offensives in 2004, reports of violent deaths are compiled by the UN on a regular basis, though not published. There are peaks and lulls but the reports — which cover all significant incidents — indicate between 6,000 and 7,000 fatalities over the last two-and-a-half years.”
Using the CRED figures, that produces a high-end estimate for 2003-2007 of 148,000 dead plus an unknown but reduced number of noncombat deaths. This points to a total considerably lower than Holmes’s 300,000.
According to the US State Department’s annual country report, “approximately 1,600 persons” died as a result of attacks and other acts of violence in Darfur in 2007. Despite occasional surges in fighting this year, as in west Darfur when 60,000 people were displaced, overall reduced levels of violence and resulting deaths appear to have been maintained. In theory, Darfur will get even safer when the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission fully deploys. But campaigners and some Western politicians continue to accuse Sudan’s government of genocide.
Holmes, who spoke at the London School of Economics on Monday, said humanitarian workers could provide sticking plasters but only a political settlement would bring durable solutions. Amid distrust on all sides, that aim remained elusive, he said. “We continue to see the goalposts receding, to the point where peace seems further away today than ever.”
