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A fixation on death tolls can be a fatal distraction | Politico Europe
ACLED highlights the limits of fatality figures in conflict analysis, as discussed in Politico Europe.
Source: Politico Europe | 6 December 2023
The popular perception of war has been dominated by a fixation on fatality figures. But as ACLED President Clionadh Raleigh argues in Politico Europe, death tolls are typically the most inaccurate measures of violence: fatality counts are often biased or taken out of context, and far more people are exposed to conflict than are killed.Prior to the Hamas attack and Israel’s retaliation in Gaza, ACLED’s global Conflict Index showed that Palestine topped the list of places with the widest diffusion of conflict, for example, with high levels of violence affecting over 60% of Palestinian territory. Yet, at the same time, fatalities were relatively low. And tragically, while this other trend was a clear warning sign in the data of further conflict to come, it was one that most people ignored.
