In response to communication from CAMERA’s Israel office, Voice of America today forthrightly corrected an erroneous Nov. 8 headline which inflated the United Nations’ figure for women and children killed during the Gaza war. Though the U.N. Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner’s newly released report considered only a select sample of fatalities in the first six months of fighting, the headline wrongly cast the findings as relating to the totality of those killed: “Nearly 70% of Gaza war dead women and children, UN rights office says.”
Notably, neither the U.N. report nor the article below the VOA headline supported the headline’s figure.
Moreover, the article in question is by Reuters, and Reuters’ own headline, which includes the essential qualifying word “verified,” accurately portrayed the UN report: “Gaza women, children are nearly 70% of verified war dead, UN rights office says.” (Emphasis added.)
Both the U.N. report and the Reuters article are clear that the “nearly 70%” figure narrowly relates to the number of verified deaths during the first six months of the war (8,119) out of the total to date – which Hamas claims is 43,000. VOA’s headline erroneously suggests that the 70 percent women and children percentage relates to all the deaths from Oct. 7, 2023 to the present.
The Reuters article appearing on VOA’s site under the erroneous headline states:
The U.N. Human Rights Office said on Friday nearly 70% of the fatalities it has verified in the Gaza war were women and children, and condemned what it called a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.
The U.N. count covers the first seven months of the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Gaza Strip that began more than a year ago.
The 8,119 victims verified by the U.N. Rights Office in that seven-month period is considerably lower than the toll of over 43,000 provided by Palestinian health authorities for the full 13 months of conflict. [Emphases added.]
The U.N. report’s very title notes the limited scope of the report: from November 2023 to 30 April 2024, and includes only the verified deaths, which, on page 6, says that number is 8,119 (“Six-month update report on the human rights situation in Gaza: 1 November 2023 to 30 April 2024“).
Beyond the limited time period of the U.N. figures, data analyst Mark Zlochin notes additional limitations resulting from the U.N.’s own “verification methodology,” which the U.N. itself acknowledged, stating:
That a large proportion of the fatalities verified by OHCHR were killed in residential buildings or similar housing is also partly explained by OHCHR’s verification methodology, which requires at least three independent sources, and the challenges in collecting and verifying information of killings in other circumstances.
About the OHCHR revelation, Zlochin observes:
In other words, their “methodology” makes it much more likely to leave out fatalities that were not killed “in residential buildings or similar housing” and/or those that could not be confirmed by at least three independent sources.
You know, like those that were killed in face-to-face combat with IDF, for example. [Bold in original.]
It also makes their analysis heavily biased towards the relatively rare mass-casualties events that are much more likely to be witnessed by several indepedent [sic] witnesses and leaves out many of the precision strikes with low or no collateral damage.
Finally, as an Associated Press study demonstrated, the death rate for women and children in Gaza declined dramatically beginning in April – that is, at the end point of the UN’s six month report on verified casualties. It’s therefore extremely likely that a study of war deaths in the territory in the seven months after April — even one carried out according to OHCHR’s skewed methodology — would produce a vastly lower ratio of fatalities for women and children.
In addition, an editor’s note appended to the bottom of the story acknowledges:
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the headline.
With research and writing by Adam Levick of CAMERA UK. See also “Guardian Grossly Misleads on Civilian Casualties in Gaza.”