The UN has denied that the estimated death toll of women and children in the war in Gaza has been revised downward. There was a confusion between the total numbers of dead bodies recorded and the number of those who have been fully identified.
After the Gaza health ministry’s revised totals of those killed first appeared on the website of the UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (Ocha), they were quickly seized on as proof by pro-Israel media and commentators that the UN had previously been exaggerating the toll.
They showed 24,686 dead, a downward revision from the figure of about 35,000 reported earlier in May. The UN clarified that the estimated overall death toll remained around 35,000.
Farhan Haq, a UN spokesperson, explained that the new smaller numbers reflected bodies that had been fully identified. The bigger figures included corpses for whom identification has not been completed. As the process of identification continues, it is expected that the official tolls among women and children will also rise.
The UN teams in Gaza are unable to independently verify the figures given the prevailing situation on the ground and the sheer volume of fatalities. The figures used by the UN clearly cite the health ministry in Gaza as the source. The UN will verify these figures to the extent possible when conditions permit.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, suggested that the vast majority of all remaining male casualties were Hamas combatants. However, given the still high casualty rate of women and children, it would be highly surprising if a significant number of male civilians had not also been killed.
Historically, the UN and other agencies have found that overall figures produced by the Gaza ministry of health have been largely reliable. The World Health Organization, for instance, states that the ministry has “good capacity in data collection” and its previous reporting has been credible and “well developed.”
Research by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem after the 2014 Gaza conflict also found the ministry’s totals to be largely consistent with their own survey.
While controversy over figures has tended to focus on the classification of male victims of fighting age, Gaza’s ministry of health has not distinguished between fighters and male civilians in casualty figures.
Speaking to the BBC in February, Dr Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer in security studies at King’s College London, suggested that the Israel Defense Forces defined Hamas membership extremely broadly. They included any affiliation with the organization, including civil servants or administrators.
An examination of data at the beginning of the current conflict by Prof Michael Spagat, an expert in counting conflict casualties, and the international security expert Daniel Silverman for Action on Armed Violence suggested that most of the dead have almost certainly been civilians based on the analysis of demographics.
Overall, the implications of the conflicting death toll figures in Gaza highlight the challenges faced by international organizations and the difficulty in assessing accurate casualty data in conflict zones. The ongoing disputes and confusion surrounding these figures reflect the larger complexities of the ongoing conflict, as well as the political narratives and agendas at play.