17 | Civilian casualties

official figures. Further details of the methodology and inclusion criteria used by IBC are

available on its website.

245. IBC has publicly stated that while its database cannot provide a complete

record of violent civilian deaths, it does provide an “irrefutable baseline of certain and

undeniable deaths based on the solidity of our sources and the conservativeness of

our methodology”.155

246. IBC continually updates its figures as new information becomes available. As at

April 2016, IBC had recorded between 156,531and 175,101 violent civilian deaths since

January 2003.156

247. As apparent from the material addressed earlier in this Section, estimates of the

number of fatalities caused by conflict in Iraq after 2003 vary substantially.

248. In October 2004, The Lancet published a study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg

School of Public Health entitled Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq:

cluster sample survey.157 The study was based on a survey of 988 households in

33 clusters. It estimated that there had been 98,000 more deaths from all causes in

Iraq than expected in the 18 months since the invasion (95 percent confidence interval

8,000–94,000). That estimate did not include data from one cluster in Fallujah.

249. In October 2006, The Lancet published a second study by the Johns Hopkins

Bloomberg School of Public Health.158 The study used the same (cluster sample survey)

methodology as the first study but was based on a larger sample.

250. The study estimated that between March 2003 and June 2006, there had been

654,965 excess Iraqi deaths and 601,027 excess violent Iraqi deaths as a consequence

of the conflict.

251. The IFHS was undertaken in 2006 and 2007 by the Iraqi Government in

collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO); the results were published in

The New England Journal of Medicine in January 2008.159 The IFHS collected data from

9,345 households across Iraq on a number of issues, including mortality.

252. The IFHS Study Group estimated that, between March 2003 and June 2006 (the

period covered by the second Lancet study), there were 151,000 violent deaths in Iraq.

253. In a September 2008 report, the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and

Development pooled a number of datasets, including IBC, to provide a consolidated

155 Iraq Body Count, April 2006, Speculation is no substitute: a defence of Iraq Body Count.

156 Iraq Body Count, 13 April 2016, Documented civilian deaths from violence.

157 Roberts L, Lafta R, Garfield R, Khudhairi J and Burnham G. Mortality before and after the 2003

invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey. The Lancet 364: 1857-1864 (2004).

158 Burnham G, Lafta R, Doocy S and Roberts L. Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross‑sectional

cluster sample survey. The Lancet 368: 1421‑1428 (2006).

159 Iraq Family Health Survey Study Group. Violence‑Related Mortality in Iraq from 2002 to 2006.

The New England Journal of Medicine 358: 484-493 (2008).

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