The boundaries of genocide

Quantifying the uncertainty of the death toll during the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia (1975-79)

Bibliographic Data

ID4901233
AuthorsPatrick Heuveline (0000-0001-9503-901X), I A El Kady, Mohamed Bahy-El-Din Mazen, Sabeh M Saber
Year2015
Volume69
Issue2
Pages201-218
Publication date2015-05-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePopulation Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0032-4728 • E-ISSN: 1477-4747
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00324728.2015.1045546
PMID26218856
OpenAlexW26218856
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited27

The range of estimates of excess deaths under Pol Pot's rule of Cambodia (1975-79) is too wide to be useful: they range from under 1 to over 3 million, with the more plausible estimates still varying from 1 to 2 million. By stochastically reconstructing population dynamics in Cambodia from extant historical and demographic data, we produced interpretable distributions of the death toll and other demographic indicators. The resulting 95 per cent simulation interval (1.2-2.8 million excess deaths) demonstrates substantial uncertainty over the exact scale of mortality, yet it still excludes nearly half of the previous death-toll estimates. The 1.5-2.25 million interval contains 69 per cent of the simulations for the actual number of excess deaths, more than the wider (1-2 million) range of previous plausible estimates. The median value of 1.9 million excess deaths represents 21 per cent of the population at risk. Supplementary material for this article is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2015.1045546

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