Washington Post: 380,000 Deaths in South Sudan’s Civil War

A study funded by the US Institute for Peace and the US State Department finds that more than 380,000 people died from civil war in South Sudan. The United Nations put the number at 50,000 in 2016, and South Sudan officials suggest it is even lower. Calculating casualties in a war zone is challenging, and the lead epidemiologist with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine suggests the estimate is conservative: Data was “compiled from "humanitarian agencies and media reports, piecing together factors including food security, presence of humanitarian groups and intensity of armed conflict to create a statistical model that predicts mortality by county,” reports Siobhán O'Grady for the Washington Post. “At the center of their research were around 200 surveys conducted by humanitarian groups across South Sudan.” South Sudan separated from Sudan in 2011. That break did not stop the fighting, war crimes and refugee crisis. More than 14,000 UN peacekeepers are in the country. – YaleGlobal