Transcript Verdens befolkningsutvikling

Challenges of Estimating
Srebrenica Victims in the ICTY
Approach
Workshop on Estimating War Victims in the Former
Yugoslavia,1991-1999: Challenges and Achievements
Sarajevo, 17 October 2009
Helge Brunborg
Research Department
Statistics Norway
Background
• ICTY established in May 1993, began operating
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in 1994
A need for expertise on statistics and
demography soon emerged
ICTY requested the Government of Norway to
provide a demographer
Started working in June 1997
Returned to Oslo in December 1998 but
continued as a part-time consultant
A permanent position as demographer was
created and Ewa Tabeau began working in the
fall of 2000
The population project at ICTY
Objective: Estimate the population changes in Bosnia
and Herzegovina due to armed conflicts 1992-95
Common estimates of the changes
•Dead or missing persons: 25,000 - 328,000
•Displaced persons: 1 mill.
•Refugees: 1.2 mill.
Population size
• Pre-war population (1991): 4.4 mill.
• Post-war population (1996): 3.4 mill.?
Approach: Collect and analyse data on individuals
Major data sources:
lists of
Victims:
Dead, missing, buried, exhumed, displaced, refugees
Pre-war population:
Population Census 1991
Post-war population (survivors):
People who registered to vote, displaced, refugees
Lists of individuals
with information on
•Full name
•Father’s name
•Date and place of birth
•Personal Identification Number (maticni broj)
•Place of residence
•Ethnicity
•Type of status or event
•Date of event
•…
Preferably in electronic format
Who collected the primary data?
How were the data collected?
Quality of the data?
Duplicates?
Srebrenica Project
Objective
Determine the minimum number of dead and
missing persons related to the fall of the
enclave on 11 July 1995
Srebrenica-related missing men
as per February 2000
7427 men (and 48 women)
Based on lists of missing persons
1200
1000
800
600
400
`
200
0
Age
0-4 5-9 10- 15- 20- 25- 30- 35- 40- 45- 50- 55- 60- 65- 70- 75- 80- 8514 19 24 29 34 39 44 49 54 59 64 69 74 79 84 89
Age distribution of missing persons and
exhumed bodies
As of Feb. 2000. Only 70 of the exhumed had been identified
100
Per cent
90
80
70
82,2
Missing (7481 persons)
73,6
Exhumations (1900 bodies)
60
50
40
26,4
30
17,5
20
10
0,0
0,4
0
8-12 years
13-24 years
25+ years
Probability of being missing for Muslim
men from Srebrenica
As of Feb. 2000
60 %
Additional missing probabiliy due
to 1991-95 normal mortality
Unadjusted missing probability
50 %
40 %
30 %
20 %
10 %
0%
1115
1620
2125
2630
3135
3640
4145
46- 5150 55
5660
6165
6670
71- 76- 81- 8675 80 85 90
Age at the end of 1995
Srebrenica-related dead and missing
Minimum numbers
Feb. 2000: 7,475 + 2 = 7,477
70 of these identified as dead (0.9%)
Nov. 2005: 7,661
2,054 of these identified as dead (26.8%)
Nov. 2007: 7,661 + 426 = 8,087
3,837 of these identified as dead (52.7%)
Oct. 2009: Data not yet avaiIable but we expect that
at least 60-70% have been identified as dead
Expert testimonies
• First presentation in court of demographic
evidence: Number of Srebrenica-related dead
and missing, against Radislav Krstić in June 2000
Expert testimonies on Srebrenica
• Krstić (2000)
35years
• Blagojević (2004)
15 years
• Milosević (2004)
died in 2006
• Popović et al. (2007, 2008)
ongoing
• Perisic (2008)
ongoing
Expert testimonies at ICTY by
demographers
• Until now 25 times
• Ewa Tabeau: 15 trials
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– Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Herzeg-Bosna, etc …
Helge Brunborg: 7 trials
– Srebrenica, Kosovo
Patrick Ball: 3 trials
– Kosovo
Conclusions
• Demographers and statisticians can make an important contribution to a
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war crimes court
Who did it and why? Statistics cannot tell. Need additional evidence.
Researchers are trained to be objective, critical and concerned about
quality of data and analysis
The demographic research at ICTY has contributed to the growth of
scientific work in this field
– The book The Demography of armed conflict (Springer 2006)
– Many scientific seminars and articles
– At a large demography conference in Marrakech one week ago there
were four sessions with more than 15 papers on this topic
Interesting and challenging to work on this at ICTY
A great satisfaction to have contributed to reliable figures on the number
of victims. This is important for
– History
– Reconciliation
– The families of the victims
Thank you for your attention