An NGO
responsible for reporting on war deaths in Yemen has acknowledged
that it has underestimated the casualties in the three-year-old
conflict by at least five to one.
Armed
Conflict Location and Event Data Project had originally estimated
that about 10,000 people had been killed in the war in Yemen, roughly
the same number reported by the World Health Organization. WHO
surveys are regularly cited as estimates of war deaths in Yemen by UN
agencies and the world’s media. But ACLED now estimates the true
number of people killed in Yemen is probably between 70,000 and
80,000.
ACLED’s
estimates do not include the thousands of Yemenis who have died from
the war’s indirect consequences, such as starvation and preventable
diseases like diphtheria and cholera. UNICEF reported in December
2016 that a child was dying every 10 minutes in Yemen, and the
humanitarian crisis has only worsened since then. At that rate the
total of all deaths caused directly and indirectly by the war must by
now be more than one hundred thousand.
Another
NGO, the Yemen Data Project, revealed in September 2016 that at least
a third of Saudi-led airstrikes, many of which involve U.S.-built and
(until Friday U.S.-refueled warplanes) using U.S.-made bombs, were
hitting hospitals, schools, markets, mosques, and other civilian
targets. This has left at least half the hospitals and health
facilities in Yemen damaged or destroyed, according to the Yemen Data
Project, leaving them hardly able to treat the casualties of the war
or serve their communities, let alone to compile meaningful figures
for the WHO’s surveys.
Even
comprehensive surveys of fully functioning hospitals would capture
only a fraction of the violent deaths in a war-torn country like
Yemen, where most of those killed in the war do not die in hospitals.
And yet the UN and the world’s media have continued to cite the WHO
surveys as reliable estimates of the total number of people killed in
Yemen.
Full
report:
Comments
Post a Comment