Lies, Damn Lies and Humanitarian Statistics

Let's say that you're writing about a humanitarian crisis. Motivated by the best of intentions, you want to illustrate just how bleak, how horrific said situation has become. Yet all this suffering is happening in a far-away country, with acronymed rebels slaughtering somewhat obscure ethnic groups.

So, what do you do? Throw in a few first-person accounts to provide the requisite shock value, and then statistics to give a sense of the magnitude.

Voila. You've just made a random catastrophe comprehensible, or at least semi-comprehensible. (For an example of this alchemy at work, see almost any of the posts by yours truly.)

Yet sometimes these statistics aren't quite as accurate as they purport to be. William Easterly at Aid Watch recently posted a great piece entitled We must know how many are suffering, so let's make up numbers.

Easterly -- with an appropriate amount of glee -- shows how the recent statement by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that "in 2009 about 100 million more people will be trapped in extreme poverty" is based on a World Bank report which actually estimates that "the crisis will leave an additional 89 million people in extreme poverty ... at the end of 2010.”

The World Bank report, in turn, is based on a report which actually states that "the crisis will add 53 million people to the 2009 count of the number of people living below $1.25 a day." Yet another report claims that"as many as 222 million additional workers worldwide run the risk of joining the ranks of the extreme working poor over the period 2007–2009.”

According to Easterly: "So precise estimates guide us to redeploy resources to the 100 million, or 89 million, or 53 million, or 222 million that were driven into poverty either in 2009, or 2009-2010, or 2007-2009, or 2008-2009."

Even seemingly well-accepted statistics sometimes rest on rather dubious foundations. According to the 2005 Human Security Report, the claim by the UN, NGOs, journalists and others that 90% of those killed in war today are civilians "has no basis in fact".

As the Human Security Report explains: "What then can be said about civilian fatalities in war? Prior to 1989 information was so poor that it was virtually impossible to make even crude estimates of the global civilian death toll. Even today, our estimates of civilian deaths are based on information that is never complete and is rarely accurate. Data collected by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program suggest that between 30% and 60% of fatalities in 2002 were civilians."

The International Committee of the Red Cross agrees, calling the 90% figure "difficult, if not impossible, to substantiate."

This is not to say that all humanitarian statistics are dubious -- UN OCHA in particular does a great job of collecting information even in the most difficult of situations. Hence UN OCHA Reporting Appreciation Day.

[Photo of the Central African Republic from Jean-Francois Dontaine for FAO, available on hdptcar's photostream on flickr - Creative Commons, Attribution]