Response to comment by Ms. Ola Awad on the paper 'Selection bias and the statistical patterns of mortality in conflict' [1]

摘要

We appreciate Ms. Awad's thoughtful response to our paper, and we agree with several of her points. In particular, we share her emphasis that it is important to quantify conflict violence, as this information can support a number of transitional justice or other post-conflict processes. For example, at the conclusion of the trial of General Jose Efrain Rios Montt for crimes of genocide, the judges concluded that the statistical evidence presented by Patrick Ball confirmed, "in numerical form, what the victims said." As another example, Hagan et al. [3] describe how the establishment of casualty counts can be crucial: "The structure of international criminal law ... holds to the dictum 'no body, no crime.' This presents significant problems for lawyers investigating or prosecuting heads of state for crimes against humanity that can be hidden behind the doctrine of state autonomy. To establish legal responsibility, either bodies must be uncovered from mass graves and identified, as was done in Srebrenica, or the number of deaths must be otherwise convincingly established."