UPDATED: Shrinking costs of war?

UPDATE 26.01.10: Change.org's Daniel Gerstle looks at the sampling methods behind the statistics.

Quite a lot of discussion of the new Human Security Report [links to pdf], which revises down some of the estimated numbers killed in conflicts such as the civil war in the Congo and argues that actually, conflict is less deadly than it used to be. The International Rescue Committee disagrees, and Bill Schabas thinks it's all very interesting. Reuters explains why the numbers matter.

Meanwhile, Reuters also reports on a Lancet article (no, not that one) suggesting that 80% of the 300,000 conflict-related deaths in Darfur since 2003 were caused by disease.