Deaths, injuries and detentions during civil demonstrations in Sudan: a secondary data analysis

BACKGROUND: Since December 2018, the latest wave of anti-government protests in Sudan has led to deaths, injuries and detentions. We estimated the number of people killed and described patterns of deaths, injuries and detentions up to 9 April 2019. METHODS: We tabulated data from three publicly available lists maintained by Sudanese civil society sources (the Independent Movement, the Sudan Doctors’ Union and the “Lest We Forget” project), and applied to these a capture-recapture statistical technique that models the overlap among lists to estimate the number of deaths not on any list. RESULTS: We estimated that about 117 civilians were killed in demonstrations during the above period, a considerably larger number than hitherto reported. Most decedents and injury victims were shot. CONCLUSIONS: This analysis demonstrates the importance of real-time data on political violence collected by civil society initiatives. The de facto Sudanese government should immediately cease attacks against peaceful civilian protesters and put in place guarantees for their safety. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13031-019-0199-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.