Research shows deaths from war falling rapidly
Updated
Research on the human toll of war has found far fewer people die now compared to the 1950s, contrary to perceptions that war's now more deadly. Part of the reason is that conflicts have become smaller. But better healthcare and humanitarian efforts have generally cut national death rates and the report finds that's not reversed by deaths in war. The report also recommends that the United Nations do more to gather evidence to help fill big gaps in information on the impact of war.
Presenter: Linda Mottram
Speaker: Professor Andrew Mack, Director Human Security Project Simon Fraser University Vancouver
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MOTTRAM: Grave images of conflict from far corners of the earth beam across the world seemingly without end in the era of satellites, the internet and television. And there is a popular perception that wars are growing more deadly. But Professor Andrew Mack, project director for the Human Security Report, says their work proves otherwise.
MACK: We believe that the costs of war, the deadliness of wars, the number of people getting killed per conflict per year, has gone down pretty dramatically and the absolute decline is quite extraordinary.
MOTTRAM: Launching the report at the United Nations in New York, Professor Mack said the research showed around 700-thousand people were killed violently in war in 1950 .. most of them in the Korean War. In 2007, the number of battle deaths globally was less than 40-thousand. To look at it decade by decade .. the average war was killing around ten thousand people in the decade from 1950, between the years 2000 and 2007, it was one thousand on average.
Professor Mack says a key change has been that wars now are much smaller.
MACK: In the Cold War it wasn't unusual to see wars taking place that had a million or even two million men under arms, you had modern weapons systems, major conventional weapons systems, long range bombardments of cities and so forth. And, and this was critically important, a lot of intervention by the major powers, primarily the United States, China, Russia.
MOTTRAM: In addition humanitarian assistance was minimal .. and very importantly there was little immunisation .. so death from disease during war was much higher.
Today's wars by comparison use small armies, very little full frontal combat, soldiers are generally poorly trained, they have few conventional weapons and limited power projection capability and the fighting is highly localised.
Andrew Mack says that means lives go on around wars, cutting down excess deaths.
There's one conflict though where Professor Mack has disputed the accepted figures on deaths. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, research by the International Rescue Committee put the number of deaths at a staggering five-point-four million. Professor Mack says his group found methodological problems which means the number is seriously inflated and could be less than half that. The International Rescue Committee stands by its figures. Professor Mack says either way, the work of the committee in raising the alarm about what is undoubtably an enormous the tragedy in Congo has been extraordinary.
Most surprising in the world though, Professor Mack says, was the finding across a series of the world's conflict points that even during war, the trend is that mortality rates continue to fall.
Andrew Mack says its long term health gains, in particular childhood immunisation, which means added deaths from war no longer reverse the overall number of national deaths.
MACK: There's been a revolution in health policy in the developing world, which is where most wars take place, and that as a consequ ence of that, the impact of wars is simply not big enough to change that. And that's because wars have become smaller, its also the case that wars have become much fewer.
MOTTRAM: Professor Mack says the findings are a tribute to the humanitarian community and particularly the pursuit of immunisation .. that protecting children's health in peace time, and protecting them in war time with mass immunisations during ceasefires, is critical to preventing deaths at all times.
With the report growing out of concern that there was no evidence base for tracking trends in armed conflict, it also recommends that the UN should undertake country-wide surveys of mortality, livelihoods, education and wealth levels, whenever it embarks on a new peace operation. And the surveys should be repeated every two years.
