Many experts and expert groups from a range of fields are attempting to combine their knowledge to understand the lethality to Iraqis of the invasion and post-invasion violence in Iraq.
This is a slightly abridged and amended version of an invited "meta-analysis" of IBC's potential contribution to that understanding, presented in a closed meeting of the Ad Hoc Expert Group on mortality estimates for Iraq, convened by WHO in Geneva, May 2007.
1. Completeness (a):
Some key issues:
- “Overcounting” is unlikely, given the systematic checks that IBC has developed for avoiding double counting and for weeding out instances of misreporting (see pertinent section of IBC’s Methods).
- We assume that reporting is incomplete; the key question is, by how much.
- The information within the database itself provides new assessment tools, as will be shown later in this presentation.
- A standard, and important, assessment method is to use nearly-comparable but non-media dependent data, when available. From April 2004 to December 2006 the Iraqi Ministry of Health irregularly issued cumulative death totals (shown on next page).