Death toll comparisons
In a previous post, I presented some comparisons of conflict death tolls according to regions, and compared them with media coverage. Here is another set of comparisons to help keep the scale of conflicts throughout the world in perspective.
The death toll from the world’s deadliest conflict of our times – the DRC (5,400,000) – is compared to the death tolls of a number of other better-known conflicts – those in Israel-Palestine (5,000), Kosovo (10,000), Bosnia (60,000) and Darfur (300,000). The square area of each circle is proportionate to the death toll of each conflict.
(Death tolls are approximations (see this post) and are calculated as of 2007)
23 February, 2009 at 12:24 am
Great and very helpful post. Thanks.
Best regards,
http://stopthewarinnorthkivu.wordpress.com
23 February, 2009 at 1:07 am
[...] Stealth Conflicts suggests this is the death toll comparison between the conflict in the DRC and the Palestine-Israeli conflict. I am sure that this estimation (based on known figures) is very close to the real figure. [...]
24 February, 2009 at 8:03 am
[...] Also check out the graphics from Stealth Conflicts. [...]
26 February, 2009 at 12:09 pm
[...] Death toll comparisons « [...]
3 March, 2009 at 2:21 am
[...] a comment » The Stealth Conflicts blog puts up a great view for all of us to see: the casualties comparison in different world conflicts. For example, the [...]
3 March, 2009 at 4:05 am
[...] Stealth Conflicts has an excellent illustration of what one might call the “casualty footprint” of conflicts. (I suggested a similar procedure with the media footprint of conflicts.) This is a visual way to bring forward the strikingly low casualties of the Arab-Israeli conflict. H/T: Honest Reporting [...]
3 March, 2009 at 5:26 am
[...] Some perspective from Stealth Conflicts (hat tip: Backspin) The death toll from the world’s deadliest conflict of our times – the DRC [...]
3 March, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Very good post! I have posted a less scientific (but, I hope, also helpful) extension of the idea at my blog.
4 March, 2009 at 1:11 am
Thank you Yaacov. I will take a look at your blog.
4 March, 2009 at 7:26 am
[...] Stealth Conflicts has a neat graphic representing the relative death tolls of recent conflicts in the world. I [...]
5 March, 2009 at 3:31 am
I’m listening now to Dore Gold’s “Tower of Babble”. Among other things, he talks about UN’s dramatic involvement in some conflicts (like the Israeli-Palestinian one) while totally ignoring some others (like Darfur). Your charts provide a good informational addition to me on the subject.
8 March, 2009 at 6:59 am
[...] Mehr dazu unter http://stealthconflicts.wordpress.com [...]
9 March, 2009 at 2:19 am
Thanks for the message, Tacticalsniper. Glad you found it useful. I can’t say I’ve read the book Tower of Babble, but I do think we need to be careful about talking about the UN as a singular and unified body. The Secretary-General, Security Council and the General Assembly all are part of the UN, for example, but are so different they may as well be completely separate organizations. As such, when looking at the shortcomings of ‘the UN’, we need to look at who exactly is responsible. If it is a problem with the Secretary-General, then the responsibility is easy to pin down, but the SG has so little power to begin with. If the problem is with the Security Council, on the other hand, then this is not so much an issue of ‘the UN’, but of the most powerful unelected (otherwise known as the permanent) members – the ones who make the decisions based largely on their own interests.
9 March, 2009 at 2:52 am
Virgil,
First of, it seems I still have a lot to learn to reach your level. Thank you for sharing some of your expertise.
Honestly, I didn’t think much of UN as it is, after reading the book, reading how UN stood by during massacres in Rwanda, Bosnia and others… No reason to be part of it anymore, IMO.
9 March, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Tacticalsniper, there is a lot of propaganda and unfair UN bashing out there (different parts of the UN deserve a bit of bashing, but it should be well-founded and fair).
‘The UN’ does tend to generally stand by during many conflicts and massacres, but this is almost always because the decisionmakers decide to stand by. Such decisions are made by the UN Security Council, which is a body dominated by the world’s powerful countries. They usually decide to stand by when it is not particularly in their interests (too expensive, too messy, nothing to benefit etc.), or when it is in their interests to keep things quiet.
In short, it is the powerful countries that make the decisions about what the UN should and shouldn’t do. The UN Secretary-General and the UN Secretariat really don’t come into the equation when push comes to shove (the Secretary-General can make recommendations, but that’s about it). You may be interested in my other book: The Silence of the UN Security Council.
At least much of the world is aware that ‘the UN’ has stood by during massacres in Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. But what about the massacres for which everybody seems to stand by, and therefore few even speak out about? The DRC, Burundi, Angola – these are key examples. I write this blog for those massive conflicts that do not even generate outrage, let alone response…
12 March, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Virgil,
I suspect by now you have seen how your impressive work is being used. It is being used by all the above sites to demonstrate just how just and noble and restrained is Israel’s military. This is clearly not your intent, and it never fails to amaze me how people will intentionally miss the larger intent of a study — look at how the Congo war is ignored — and co-opt it to serve a political agenda.
sigh…
13 March, 2009 at 1:35 am
Yes, Ken. Thanks for noticing. These graphs for some reason seem to have been picked up by some and used to show that Israel is being unfairly demonized. And you are absolutely right, this was not at all my intention. The whole point is about showing how the massive conflict in the DRC is being ignored (I thought the large red circle would have done the job).
With the attention and background knowledge on the DRC so low to begin with, it must be difficult to take off the blinders and see the scale of the problem here. In general, it is difficult for people to know what to do with new information, and they tend to revert to processing the new information in the context of what they think they already know… New data is co-opted for the established cause.
Our work is certainly cut out for us and the road ahead is indeed going to be long…
14 March, 2009 at 1:05 am
I posted the graphs on my blog and I did notice that Israel is being unfairly treated, IMO, but the intent was that while the situation in Israel is being widely covered, many massacres, much worse than what happened in Gaza, for example, are being totally ignored by the media. I guess there are different people around and they do use the graphs for different purposes.
6 April, 2009 at 4:29 pm
It would be great if you highlighted some backgrounds on conflict of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which is the main focus of this post.