Darfur Conflict Death Toll Could Be 255,000, Say Researchers

The Darfur conflict in Sudan claimed the lives of between 170,000 and 255,000 people in its first 31 months, according to a new estimate by sociologists.

The authors consider the range of numbers, based on interviews with survivors at refugee camps, to be the minimum death toll from the fighting and genocide. "The numbers may actually be much higher," said John Hagan of Northwestern University in Illinois. "Our goal is to have an estimate that accurately portrays the scale and urgency of the situation."

The figures do not include deaths from violence that has brewed since the May peace accord began to unravel, but it is unlikely that the civilian toll has returned to the levels in late 2003 and early 2004 when more than 15,000 were killed each month.

Professor Hagan and Professor Alberto Palloni used data collected at 48 camps over 19 months by the World Health Organisation and Médecins sans Frontières. The analysis, which does not include missing people, appears in today's issue of Science.

The upper estimate of 255,000 comes from asking families how many relatives had died in the conflict and then applying those figures to the whole population. This method probably overestimates the true number because some families talk about distant relations, who may be counted twice. The figure of 170,000 was calculated after asking families how many children under five they had lost. This probably underestimates the death toll because families that are wiped out never report dead children.

Prof Hagan said he was concerned that the US state department's estimate of 63,000 to 146,000 deaths for the first 23 months of the conflict set the tone for coverage. "We were quite concerned about the impact of this state department estimate," he said. "We think it really dampened, suppressed or chilled the way in which this was reported. People began to talk about tens of thousands of deaths rather than hundreds of thousands of deaths."