One in five southern Sudanese killed in civil war

At least 1.9 million people in southern and central Sudan have died as a direct result of Sudan’s civil war, according to a new study by the US Committee for Refugees (USCR). The report, ‘Quantifying Genocide in Southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains: 1983-1998’, estimates the 15-year civil war has killed one out of every five southern Sudanese, and more than 80 percent of southern Sudan’s estimated 5 million people have been displaced at some time since 1983. It estimates that more than 70,000 civilians have died of war-related causes in the first half of 1998 alone. According to a USCR statement received by IRIN, “the massive loss of live in Sudan far surpasses the death toll in any other current civil war anywhere in the world.”