In areas of armed conflict, estimates of mortality do more than simply tally the death toll. These estimates can shape the scale and structure of humanitarian responses and serve as mechanisms for documenting violations of international law with the granularity required for accountability. Yet, as the genocide in the Gaza Strip has shown, there is often a central paradox in these epidemiological studies: the more devastating the harm to civilian infrastructure, data collectors, and health systems, the more difficult it can be to analyse a death toll.
In areas of armed conflict, estimates of mortality do more than simply tally the death toll. These estimates can shape the scale and structure of humanitarian responses and serve as mechanisms for documenting violations of international law with the granularity required for accountability. Yet, as the genocide in the Gaza Strip has shown, there is often a central paradox in these epidemiological studies: the more devastating the harm to civilian infrastructure, data collectors, and health systems, the more difficult it can be to analyse a death toll.