Many experts and expert groups from a range of fields are attempting to combine their knowledge to understand the lethality to Iraqis of the invasion and post-invasion violence in Iraq.
This is a slightly abridged and amended version of an invited "meta-analysis" of IBC's potential contribution to that understanding, presented in a closed meeting of the Ad Hoc Expert Group on mortality estimates for Iraq, convened by WHO in Geneva, May 2007.
The ground rules concerning IBC:
IBC does not include non-violent deaths, or combatants, but is a detailed compilation of publicly-known violent civilian deaths and the incidents in which they occurred.
IBC integrates all public domain information mediated by journalists (including official casualty monitoring reports).1
1 See About IBC for a description of IBC's scope and limitations, and links to fuller descriptions of IBC's methods.