The United Nations has drastically revised its death toll for women and children in the Gaza war, cutting it by almost 50%, after admitting that it had relied on unverified figures provided by the Hamas-run Ministry of Health.
The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has acknowledged that its previous death toll figures, which claimed that 9,500 women and 14,500 children had been killed in the conflict, were based on incomplete and unreliable data. In its latest report, OCHA has revised the numbers down to 4,959 women and 7,797 children, a reduction of nearly half.
The sudden and unexplained change in numbers has raised concerns about the accuracy of the UN's reporting on the conflict. Hamas has been accused of exaggerating the death toll for political gain, and Israel has claimed that more than a third of those killed were combatants.
Despite these concerns, the UN has continued to use the unverified Hamas figures as the basis for its policies and agenda. President Biden has quoted the Hamas numbers in his State of the Union address and commissioned a State Department inquiry into Israel's conduct based on them.
UN spokesman Farhan Aziz Haq explained that the breakdowns were based on data from the Ministry of Health in Gaza, and that those figures "can vary based on their own verification process that they undertake." However, he admitted that "the United Nations teams on the ground in Gaza are unable to independently verify those figures given the prevailing situation on the ground and the sheer volume of fatalities."
Israeli officials have repeatedly accused the UN of parroting Hamas propaganda without any verification process. They point to an incident at a hospital early in the war that killed nearly 100 civilians, which the UN initially blamed on Israel but later acknowledged was caused by an errant rocket fired by a Gaza terror group.
David Adesnik, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said that the UN's sudden revision of the death toll is "a step forward for the U.N., even though it still has a long way to go." He added that "Western journalists, who are often the most vocal defenders of the numbers from Hamas-controlled sources," also need to be more critical in their reporting.
Despite the UN's admission that its death toll figures were unreliable, the organization has not yet addressed other concerns raised by Israel. These include allegations that Hamas has used UN infrastructure for its terror activities and that it has prevented humanitarian aid from reaching civilians in need.
The UN's failure to fully address these concerns has led to accusations that it is biased against Israel. Foreign Minister Israel Katz has called for the resignation of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, saying that anyone who relies on fake data from a terrorist organization is antisemitic and supports terrorism.
The conflict in Gaza has been ongoing for seven months, and the death toll continues to rise. The UN's revised death toll figures are a reminder of the importance of accurate and unbiased reporting in times of conflict.
