It has been called the first genocide of the 21st century. Now it seems that the crisis of death and displacement in the Darfur region of Sudan has been underestimated. A new analysis suggests that hundreds of thousands of people have died in the conflict rather than the tens of thousands earlier reported.
John Hagan at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and Alberto Palloni at the University of Wisconsin at Madison used UN counts of refugees living in camps in western Darfur and combined them with the best available surveys which had interviewed internally displaced people living in these camps. They then extended this ratio of death to displacement across northern and southern Darfur.
鈥淚t is likely that the number of deaths for this conflict in greater Darfur is higher than 200,000 individuals, and it is possible that the death toll is much higher,鈥� Hagan and Palloni write in the journal Science (vol 313, p 1578). Earlier estimates relied on data from restricted areas over shorter periods and failed to take into account the elevated death rates among people living in refugee camps.
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Sudan was high on the agenda at a meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York this week, where officials were expected to push for UN troops and logistical support to back up the African Union peacekeeping forces already in the area.
Sudan鈥檚 President Omar Hassan Bashir continues to oppose UN intervention in the country.