Who counts
Casualty and displacement figures come from very different kinds of counters, each with its own methods and blind spots:
- Health authorities in the affected territory, which count deaths recorded by hospitals and morgues.
- UN agencies and monitoring missions, which record individual cases they can corroborate and usually publish only what they have verified.
- Researchers and data projects, which compile events from news and other reporting and code them consistently over time.
- Governments and armed forces, which publish figures about their own losses (rarely) and about enemy losses (often).
- Humanitarian agencies, which track displacement through registrations, surveys and site monitoring.
Words that change the meaning
- Casualties usually means killed and wounded, and sometimes missing and captured as well. It is not a synonym for deaths.
- Direct deaths are caused by violence; indirect deaths come from disease, hunger and the collapse of health care that war brings. Indirect deaths can exceed direct ones, and they are much harder to count.
- Verified or recorded figures count individual cases that have been checked. Estimates model the true total from samples, surveys or statistical methods.
- Internally displaced people have fled their homes but remain inside their country. Refugees have crossed an international border.
Why figures differ
Two honest counters can publish very different numbers for the same war. One may count only cases it has verified one by one; another may estimate the whole. One may count from the start of the war, another from a later date. One may include combatants, another only civilians. Access matters too: where monitors cannot reach, deaths go unrecorded.
Monitoring missions often say plainly that their verified totals are a floor and the real figure is likely higher. A low verified number is not proof that few people died.
Claims about the other side
Figures that a party publishes about its enemy's losses are a special case. They are part of the war's information effort and are almost always impossible to check. We report them, when we report them at all, as claims attributed to the party that made them, never as fact.
Combatants and civilians
Whether a person killed was a combatant or a civilian is one of the most contested questions in any war. Counters who record identities may not know affiliation; parties have reasons to classify the dead in ways that suit them. Treat any breakdown into combatants and civilians as provisional unless the counter explains how it was made.
How to read a figure on BattleBytes
Every figure on our conflict pages names the institution that produced it and the date or period it covers, for example the UN refugee agency's displacement count for a given year. Where the institution gives a range, we give the range. Where no reputable current figure exists, we publish none rather than make one up.
When you compare two figures, check three things first: who counted, what exactly they counted, and over which period. Most apparent contradictions dissolve once those are clear.