Nearly 400,000 ‘excess deaths’ caused by South Sudan war
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — South Sudan’s civil war has caused nearly 400,000 “excess deaths” since fighting erupted in late 2013, a new report funded by the U.S. State Department said Wednesday after years of uncertainty.
The report by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine estimates that “violent injuries” caused about half of those 382,900 deaths. Increased risk of disease and reduced access to health care contributed to others, it said.
The civil war’s death toll has long been unknown, with estimates in the tens of thousands.
“To our knowledge this is the first comprehensive estimate of how many people have died because of the war,” Francesco Checchi, a lead investigator on the study, told The Associated Press. “Every day that goes by, hundreds more lives may be lost.”
“I think this figure is much more realistic than the 50,000 which has been used for so long,” Klem Ryan, a former official with the United Nations mission in South Sudan who later served as coordinator of the U.N. panel of experts monitoring sanctions on the country, told the AP.
Counting the dead in the civil war is difficult as so much occurs in remote locations, Ryan said. “However, that’s not justification for not compiling what we did know and pointing to the gaps.”
The new report, based on statistical modeling and not peer reviewed, says the deaths appeared to peak in 2016 and 2017.