Calculation gone wrong? UN lowers Gaza's death toll of women & children, here's what happened

Has the United Nations (UN) lowered the death toll of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip?

This question is being asked after the UN earlier this month changed the estimate for the number of women and children killed in Gaza in the seven months of war.

Here is the short answer to the question: While the UN has indeed changed the number of women and children estimated to have been killed in Gaza, it has not changed the overall estimated death toll.

Such a situation has arisen as the UN quietly changed the methodology of ascertaining Gaza’s death toll and the categorisation of dead people.

What did the UN do with Gaza’s death toll?

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On May 6, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that 34,735 people have been killed in Gaza. Of these, the UN said more than 14,500 were women and over 9,500 were women.

On May 8, the UN’s OCHA quietly updated the figures and said 7,797 children and 4,959 women were part of the total 34,844 killed in Gaza. The figures for dead women and children were almost half of the numbers published just two days back.

Such a change led to claims that the UN had ‘halved’ the death toll in Gaza, but, as it should be clear from the overall death toll published on May 8, the UN did not halve the death toll or reduce it all. It only did a downward revision of the number of women and children killed.

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Still, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz accused the UN of relying on “fake data” and sought the resignation of UN chief António Guterres.

The miraculous resurrection of the dead in Gaza.

The @UN had reduced its estimate of women and children killed in Gaza by 50% and claims that it relied on data from the Hamas Ministry of Health.

Anyone who relies on fake data from a terrorist organization in order to promote… pic.twitter.com/WbfNrB965y

— ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) May 13, 2024

UN changed methodology & categorisation of dead, it didn’t reduce toll

The change in the figures is because of the change in the methodology and categorisation by the UN.

Until May 6, the UN was using the data from Gaza’s Government Media Office (GMO) and was categorising the dead as just women and children, according to NBC News.

On May 8, the report said the UN switched to using data from Gaza’s Ministry of Health and (MoH) and started categorising the dead in the categories of women (4,959), children (7,797), men (10,006), and elderly (1,924). This adds up to 24,686.

Both the GMO and MoH of Gaza are run by the terrorist group Hamas.

In a statement to USA Today newspaper, UN Spokeswoman Eri Kaneko clarified that the category-wise breakdown was only for the dead whose identities had been confirmed by Gaza’s MoH — 24,686. The remainder of the dead were not included in the breakdown as their identities were not ascertained and they remained “missing or under the rubble”. Separately, UN Spokesperson Farhan Haq told the same to Al Jazeera.

“According to the Ministry, the fatalities for whom full details have been documented include 7,797 children, 4,959 women, 1,924 elderly, and 10,006 men. The Ministry of Health notes that the documentation process of casualties’ full identification details is ongoing,” said Kaneko.

For more than 10,000 people counted as dead in the overall death toll but excluded from the category-wise breakdown, Haq told Al Jazeera, “There’s about another 10,000 plus bodies who still have to be fully identified, and so then the details of those – which of those are children, which of those are women – that will be reestablished once the full identification process is complete.”

Netanyahu admits civilian outnumber terrorists in Gaza’s toll

Even as Israeli officials have disputed the death toll published by Hamas-run Gaza authorities, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted that more civilians have been killed in Gaza than civilians.

In an interview last week, Netanyahu said that around 32,000 people have been killed in Gaza, which is not very far from Hamas-run administration’s figure of around 35,000.

“We’ve killed about 14,000 terrorists. Unfortunately, because of the fact they use human shield, there’s slightly bigger number —about 16,000— for civilians that were killed in places where terrorists will not let them leave,” said Netanyahu in an interview with Dr Phil, an American chat-show host.