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Accounting for Death in War: Separating Fact from Fiction

Discover the main methods used to account for war deaths, how they've been used and practice using them yourself.

2,296 enrolled on this course

A banner affixed to a fence and displaying photographs of people missing and presumed dead as a result of the war in Kosovo 1998-99

Accounting for Death in War: Separating Fact from Fiction

2,296 enrolled on this course

  • 3 weeks

  • 3 hours per week

  • Digital certificate when eligible

  • Open level

Find out more about how to join this course

Understand how war deaths are counted

Calculating the number of deaths during a war is a difficult, but necessary, task - having accurate information is crucial for political and societal debates and decisions.

On this course you will explore the methods currently used to account for war deaths and then apply these methods to particular wars. Along the way you will debunk some widely circulated war-death claims. You will focus mainly on direct, violent deaths but will also cover some estimates of non-violent deaths caused indirectly by war.

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Skip to 0 minutes and 8 seconds Hello. I’m Mike Spagat from Royal Holloway University of London. If I walk a mere 415 steps from my house, there’s a memorial to people from my village who died during World War I and World War II. It mainly just lists their names. There are similar monuments all over the UK and indeed around the world. Some of these are names carved in stone. Some of them are electronic on computers. Why are they there? Why do such memorials so often take the form of a list of names? What can we learn from these records? These are some of the questions we’ll be addressing together in this course.

Skip to 0 minutes and 47 seconds We also see some big newspaper headlines or headlines online– 1 million people killed in Iraq, 5.4 million dead in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Two decades ago headlines blared that 100,000 men were unaccounted for in Kosovo, probably dead. Later, this number was quietly revised downward to around 13,500. This last figure turns out to be one of the most solid war death figures we have. But where do these numbers actually come from? How are they derived? Are they reliable? What are their weaknesses? How can we separate fact from fiction? These are also the kinds of questions we’ll ask in the course. We’ll develop knowledge of the evidence on war deaths from a few relatively recent wars.

Skip to 1 minute and 44 seconds But more importantly, we’ll develop a basis for understanding how such numbers are generated. By the end of the course you’ll be a sophisticated and critical consumer of war death information. I’m looking forward to working with you. See you soon.

Syllabus

  • Week 1

    Documentation of violent war deaths

    • Welcome to the course

      I briefly welcome students to the course, set the table with an initial overview of our workhorse concepts and encourage people to be nice to each other in our online discussion. Then we dive into our first discussions.

    • Military personnel

      We examine some efforts to memorialize military service personnel who have been killed in wars.

    • Including civilians

      Our discussion so far has been about military personnel killed in wars. Now we expand our scope to include civilians.

    • Casualty recording

      This section is an introduction to the principles and practices of casualty recording. Please makes yourself known in the comments section if you have done, are doing or are thinking of doing some casualty recording.

    • Conclusion

      We finish up our week on the documentation of violent war deaths and prepare to move on to week 2 on the statistical estimation of violent war deaths.

  • Week 2

    Estimation of violent war deaths

    • Introduction

      My lecture introduces the week and the interview clip makes a nice link between Week 1 and Week 2.

    • Sample surveys

      We discuss the ideas behind sample-survey-based estimates of war deaths. We do some calculations to drive home the key ideas.

    • Applying survey methods to estimate violent war deaths

      Now that we have discussed how sample surveys work in general we study more of the specifics on how we can use sample surveys to measure violent war deaths.

    • Quantifying uncertainty

      A big advantage of sample surveys is that, if done well, we create a controlled data-gathering environment. This control creates possibilities for us to quantify our uncertainty. This is what we discuss in the present activity.

    • Survey success and failure

      So far we have discussed calculations for surveys operating under pristine conditions. In practice, conditions are never pristine. So it is important to know about some of the main things that can go wrong with a sample survey.

    • Capture-recapture - multiple systems estimation

      Capture-recapture, also known as multiple systems estimation, is an important alternative to sample surveys for estimating violent war deaths and their patters. This activity is just for basic familiarization with this method..

    • Conclusion

      Here we try to consolidate our knowledge gleaned in Week 2.

  • Week 3

    Beyond violent deaths

    • Introduction

      Violent deaths are just one way war damages human lives. This week we consider non-violent deaths that may be indirectly linked to wars and war injuries. I also introduce research that accounts for global war deaths trends.

    • Excess deaths and indirect deaths

      We develop a conceptual apparatus for defining and measuring non-violent deaths indirectly caused by war.

    • Problems with excess deaths in theory and practice

      We have seen the concept of excess deaths so it is time to critique it. I give two case studies that illustrate problems with the standard concept of excess death ideas and then show a third case study that avoids these issues.

    • Injuries

      Now we go beyond death to consider war injuries which are a growing source of concern as medical advances now save people who would have previously succumbed to their injuries.

    • Consolidating our knowledge

      We start by reviewing our three main concepts, this time from on top of our mountain of knowledge. Next we turn with some sophistication to examine projects measuring global war violence trends.

    • Conclusion

      Time to sum up the whole course and say good bye....for now.

When would you like to start?

Start straight away and join a global classroom of learners. If the course hasn’t started yet you’ll see the future date listed below.

  • Available now

Learning on this course

On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

  • Explain the main methods used to account for war deaths
  • Describe the state of war-death knowledge for several modern wars, including some that have been misrepresented by faulty statistics
  • Evaluate the quality of war-death numbers and debate their strengths and weaknesses
  • Calculate war-death estimates from some basic pieces of information

Who is the course for?

This course is for anyone interested in war, history and politics and/or the use and abuse of numbers and statistics. You don’t need an advanced knowledge of mathematics.

What do people say about this course?

Fantastic course! Thank you , Michael.

"Fantastic! Having studied Conflict Resolution & Postwar Development at PG level, it's been useful to expand my knowledge of what happens after wars end with what happens while wars are ongoing."

Who will you learn with?

Royal Holloway University of London economics professor mainly studying war - including measurement and memory of war deaths, (possible) decline of war and fabrication in survey data from war zones

Advocacy Director at Every Casualty Counts.

I am the new Executive Director of Every Casualty Counts, an INGO focussed on casualty recording.

We support casualty recorders through our network and advocate for local, national and global change.

Who developed the course?

Royal Holloway, University of London

Queen Victoria presided over the grand opening of Royal Holloway in 1886. Since then the College has continued to grow in size and status to become one of the top research-led institutions in the UK.

Every Casualty Counts

Every Casualty Counts (ECC) believes that every life lost to armed violence must be promptly recorded, correctly identified and publicly acknowledged.

ECC is the only international organisation focussed solely on advancing casualty recording in all situations of armed violence, with over a decade of experience in this field.

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Choose the best way to learn for you!

Buy this course

$54/one-off payment

Fulfill your current learning need

  • Access to this course
  • Learn at your own pace
  • Discuss your learning in comments
  • Tests to boost your learning
  • Printed and digital certificate when you’re eligible

Subscribe & save

$349.99 for one year

Automatically renews

Develop skills to further your career

  • Access to this course
  • Access to 1,000+ courses
  • Learn at your own pace
  • Discuss your learning in comments
  • Tests to boost your learning
  • Digital certificate when you're eligible

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Start learning today

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  • Limited to 3 weeks

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