Credible evidence points to 1m dead in Iraq

The figure comes from Iraq Body Count. This organisation counts only those deaths reported by international media and were killed by violence. Iraq Body Count says itself that this represents a fraction of the actual number.

In a conference at Harvard in 2007 where 13 countries at war were compared, it was established that 80 per cent of violent deaths remained unreported. Authorities in the city of Najaf said in the same year that 40,000 unidentified dead had been buried in the city alone.

In a Lancet article, written by a research team of Johns Hopkins University, the investigators said in 2006 that 600,000 people had perished.

Les Roberts, the leader of the Lancet study, employed the same scientific methods used in Darfur, Bosnia and Congo. While those numbers are regularly quoted, his conclusions about the enormous impact of the war in Iraq are ignored.

The impact of war on the civilian population is not limited solely to direct victims of war. Disease and deprivation create a multitude of victims.

In 2010 there have certainly been nearer 1 million deaths and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres has stated that Iraq is the world's best-known conflict but the least-known humanitarian crisis.

According to recent UNHCR figures there are now 2.7 million internally displaced Iraqis and 2.2 million refugees, mainly in neighbouring countries. That is one in six Iraqis. More than eight million Iraqis depend on humanitarian aid.

Iraq is one of the largest manmade humanitarian disasters in recent history. How long are we going to deny it?

Dirk Adriaensens
Executive committee member
Bertrand Russell Tribunal