Published on: 9 May 2023 | Last updated: 1 November 2023
ACLED includes an estimate of fatalities for each event, including events where no fatalities are reported. The ‘Fatalities’ column indicates the number of reported fatalities associated with a single event. Fatality information, either regarding counts or attribution, is often biased and can differ across source information for the same event. For this and other reasons, ACLED defers to the most conservative and reliable fatality estimate available. This number refers to the total number of fatalities that were reported, across all sides of the event. Fatalities are not attributed to specific groups (see more on this point here), though such detail may be indicated in the ‘Notes column’ if reported in the source information. ACLED does not collect data on injuries; reports of “casualties’” only are assumed to be injuries (not fatalities) and hence coded as zero fatalities (for more on fatality coding see this primer).
