One Million-plus Iraqis killed since 2003
Source: alalam.ir, 31-01-2008
LONDON-The US-led invasion of Iraq has caused the killing of at least one million people in the war-wracked country from 2003 onwards, according to a study published Wednesday.
Data compiled by London-based Opinion Research Business (ORB) and its research partner in Iraq, the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies (IIACSS) said a fifth of Iraqi households lost at least one family member between March 2003 and August 2007 due to the conflict.
The study based its findings on survey work involving the face-to-face questioning of 2,414 Iraqi adults aged 18 or above, and the last complete census in Iraq in 1997, which indicated a total of 4.05 million households.
Respondents were asked how many members of their household, if any, had died as a result of the violence in the country since 2003, and not because of natural causes.
ORB said in a statement: "We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been in the order of 1,033,000."
The margin of error for the survey was 1.7 percent, making the estimated range between 946,000 and 1.12 million fatalities.
The highest rate of deaths throughout the country occurred in Baghdad, where more than 40 percent of households had lost a family member.
According to a July 2007 estimate by the United States, Iraq's population is around 27 million.
The country has been shattered by conflict since the March 2003 invasion which deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, with United Nations estimates putting the number of displaced people from the conflict at more than four million, nearly half of which have fled to neighboring countries.
A small number of those refugees have begun returning to Iraq -- around 20,000 arrived from Syria in December -- the Iraqi Red Crescent said earlier this month, suggesting an improved security situation.
Meanwhile, a Ministry of Planning report from mid-2007 put the number of divorcees and widows close to 1 million of a total of 8.5 million women aged between 15 and 80.
Narmeen Othman, Iraq's acting minister for women's affairs put the number as high as 2 million in the country of 27 million people.
Whatever their number, parliamentarians say the women who have lost male family members since the US-led invasion of Iraq are increasingly lacking the means to provide for themselves
"The number (of widows) is increasing day after day, it is becoming a time bomb, especially because many of them are still young," Othman says. "They become prisoners at home."
Only 84,000 of Iraq's widows receive government support from the Ministry of Labor and Social Support -- between 50,000 and 120,000 Iraqi Dinars -- $40-95 -- a month.
A report by aid groups found that 43 percent of Iraqis lived in "absolute poverty". Four million people needed food assistance and only one in three children under five had access to safe drinking water.
LONDON-The US-led invasion of Iraq has caused the killing of at least one million people in the war-wracked country from 2003 onwards, according to a study published Wednesday.
Data compiled by London-based Opinion Research Business (ORB) and its research partner in Iraq, the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies (IIACSS) said a fifth of Iraqi households lost at least one family member between March 2003 and August 2007 due to the conflict.
The study based its findings on survey work involving the face-to-face questioning of 2,414 Iraqi adults aged 18 or above, and the last complete census in Iraq in 1997, which indicated a total of 4.05 million households.
Respondents were asked how many members of their household, if any, had died as a result of the violence in the country since 2003, and not because of natural causes.
ORB said in a statement: "We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been in the order of 1,033,000."
The margin of error for the survey was 1.7 percent, making the estimated range between 946,000 and 1.12 million fatalities.
The highest rate of deaths throughout the country occurred in Baghdad, where more than 40 percent of households had lost a family member.
According to a July 2007 estimate by the United States, Iraq's population is around 27 million.
The country has been shattered by conflict since the March 2003 invasion which deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, with United Nations estimates putting the number of displaced people from the conflict at more than four million, nearly half of which have fled to neighboring countries.
A small number of those refugees have begun returning to Iraq -- around 20,000 arrived from Syria in December -- the Iraqi Red Crescent said earlier this month, suggesting an improved security situation.
Meanwhile, a Ministry of Planning report from mid-2007 put the number of divorcees and widows close to 1 million of a total of 8.5 million women aged between 15 and 80.
Narmeen Othman, Iraq's acting minister for women's affairs put the number as high as 2 million in the country of 27 million people.
Whatever their number, parliamentarians say the women who have lost male family members since the US-led invasion of Iraq are increasingly lacking the means to provide for themselves
"The number (of widows) is increasing day after day, it is becoming a time bomb, especially because many of them are still young," Othman says. "They become prisoners at home."
Only 84,000 of Iraq's widows receive government support from the Ministry of Labor and Social Support -- between 50,000 and 120,000 Iraqi Dinars -- $40-95 -- a month.
A report by aid groups found that 43 percent of Iraqis lived in "absolute poverty". Four million people needed food assistance and only one in three children under five had access to safe drinking water.
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