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At least 62,000 people are estimated to have been killed in Sudan’s civil war, but the real number may be much higher.

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Sudan’s ongoing war has often been overlooked amid major conflicts raging on multiple continents. But the lack of media and geopolitical attention to the 18-month-old conflict does not make the devastation in terms of human life any less dire.

More than 14 million people have been killed in the country since fighting broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary Emergency Assistance Force, both of which were part of a power-sharing military junta. People are being evacuated and we are seeing the collapse of society. We judge countries by geography and ideology.

While the exact death toll may never be known, it is certain that the conflict in Sudan is one of the deadliest in the world today.

As scholars of public health, conflict, and human rights, and Sudanese-American health workers, we understand how dangerous it is to estimate war mortality for a number of practical and political reasons. I feel it keenly. However, such estimates are very important. These estimates make it easy to understand and compare conflicts, target humanitarian aid to those still at risk, launch war crimes investigations, provide testimony on conflicts, and identify states and armed forces. Interventions and changes can be forced on groups.

The difficult task of counting the dead

Sudan is experiencing a severe humanitarian crisis, characterized by ethnic cleansing, mass displacement, food shortages, and the spread of disease, compounded by flooding in northern states.

To consider the number of deaths in such conflicts, we need to consider not only those who die as a direct result of the violence (the violence itself is difficult to capture in real time), but also those who die due to factors that exacerbated the conflict. Includes counting. Medical emergencies, failed vaccination programs, and shortages of essential food and medicine. Estimating the number of deaths in the latter, known as indirect deaths, poses unique challenges as the definition itself varies between researchers.

In Congressional testimony, Tom Perriello, the U.S. special envoy to Sudan, noted that the death toll in Sudan was between 15,000 and 150,000, a range so wide that the complexity of determining indirect deaths was partially explained by The authors pointed out that this was the cause, and recognized the issues with estimation.

Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), a non-profit organization specializing in conflict-related data collection, records an average of more than 1,200 deaths per month from direct conflict in Sudan, during the first 15 months of the conflict. Nearly 19,000 people died. This figure compares with the 20,000 deaths estimated by the Sudanese Doctors Union and the 19,000 figure used by the Sudan Protection Cluster, a converged group of United Nations agencies and NGOs, using data from the World Health Organization. Similar.

ACLED derives its estimates of deaths from traditional media, reports from international NGOs and local observers, supplemented by new media such as verified Telegram and WhatsApp accounts. Meanwhile, the Sudanese Doctors Union estimates the number of deaths caused by the conflict on the ground.

Estimates can be made more precisely if separate data sources such as surveys, civil registries, and official body counts are available. However, this data is often only available retrospectively after the conflict has ended. Therefore, it is important to use both available data and precedent from past conflicts to reasonably estimate the human costs of ongoing conflicts.

A 2010 article in The Lancet found that for every direct conflict death, there were 2.3 indirect deaths, based on data from 24 small studies conducted in Darfur between 2003 and 2005. It is estimated that Therefore, using ACLED’s data for 18,916 direct deaths, we estimate: A further 43,507 people, or more than 62,000 people, have been indirectly killed in the current conflict in Sudan. Total number of deaths.

We believe our estimates are very conservative. Another group of scholars, also writing in The Lancet, estimated the death rate in the ongoing conflict in Gaza by multiplying each direct death by four indirect deaths to arrive at a total death rate for Gaza.

Meanwhile, a report by the Geneva Declaration Secretariat found that for every direct death in 13 armed conflicts between 1974 and 2007, there were an average of 5.8 indirect deaths.

Using the latter multiplier, the number of indirect deaths in Sudan jumps to nearly 110,000. This means that the total number of deaths in the region reaches 130,000, which is double our estimate.

Although this range is broad, it recognizes how difficult it is to estimate the number of indirect fatalities and how widely indirect fatalities can vary depending on the type of conflict.

Background of the Sudanese conflict

Although these numbers reflect the enormous loss of life, they certainly underestimate the true human cost of the conflict.

Sudan’s health system was already weak and underfunded before the fighting began. And compared to other ongoing conflicts, such as Gaza or Ukraine, a more unstable baseline of high infant mortality and low life expectancy already existed.

Since the start of the war in Sudan, there have been consistent reports of mass killings, enforced disappearances, sexual violence, deliberate withholding of food and medicine, and other forms of violence against civilians.

Much of the violence has targeted ethnic groups, and the Darfur region, where full-scale famine has been declared, has been disproportionately affected.

Destruction of civilian infrastructure and disruption of aid mechanisms are preventing medicines, food, clean water and vaccinations from reaching those in need.

Health workers and facilities across the country are being targeted, not just in endangered Darfur. Nearly 80% of medical facilities were rendered unusable. At least 58 doctors have been killed, adding to the many targeted in previous crises.

Bombings, ground attacks and shortages of critical supplies in Sudan could lead to hospital closures in the capital Khartoum and an increase in indirect deaths, as medical systems continue to be targeted and access to humanitarian corridors is restricted. Highly sexual.

The costs for children in Sudan are particularly worrying. According to Médecins Sans Frontières, 13 children die every day in the Zamzam camp in North Darfur, most of them due to malnutrition and lack of food.

And nearly 800,000 Sudanese children will face severe acute malnutrition until 2024, a condition that requires intensive care and nutritional support just to prevent death. Even before the conflict, children were seriously threatened by a lack of access to care, including basic preventive care such as early immunization.

Finally, conflicts like Sudan increase the spread of infectious diseases. Sudan is experiencing widespread population displacement, malnutrition, limited water and sanitation facilities, and lack of adequate shelter.

An outbreak of cholera in August led to a sharp rise in the death rate, with more than 31 deaths per 1,000 people infected with cholera. And in countries where health care coverage and surveillance are lacking, the real-world impact of such diseases is likely to be underestimated.

Limits of estimation

Sudan has experienced large-scale internal displacement of more than 14 million people, and population fluctuations make it nearly impossible to establish a baseline, complicating estimates of the death toll.

Furthermore, official information collected and released during conflicts is usually lacking.

Therefore, the establishment of concrete estimates of the true impact of armed conflicts often takes place after the cessation of hostilities, when expert teams are able to carry out field investigations.

Even then, estimates require assumptions regarding direct deaths, the ratio of indirect to direct deaths, and the quality of existing data.

However, as scholars working at the intersection of public health and human rights, we believe that such research, however imperfect, is necessary to document conflict and prevent future conflicts. Masu. There are currently many global conflicts that require our urgent attention, but Sudan’s conflict must not be lost among them.

Israa Hassan, a physical medicine and rehabilitation resident at Texas Rehabilitation Hospital in Fort Worth and director of advocacy for the Sudanese American Medical Association, contributed to this article.

Presented by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.conversation

Quote: At least an estimated 62,000 people have died in Sudan’s civil war, but the real number may be much higher (November 2, 2024) https://phys.org/news/2024-11- Retrieved November 2, 2024 from sudan-civil-war-left-dead.html

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