For a country in a given period, excess death (avoidable death, avoidable mortality, excess mortality, deaths that should not have happened) is the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently governed country with the same demographics. [1].
The UN Population Division (see: http://esa.un.org/unpp/index.asp?panel=2 ) provides detailed demographic data for essentially every country in the world since 1950 i.e. data on population, death rate, birth rate, population breakdown, under-5 infant mortality rate.
For “good outcome”, low avoidable mortality, high birth rate Developing countries, the death rate is about 4 deaths per 1000 population per year (e.g. for Syria it is 3.4) and accordingly for high birth rate Developing countries “avoidable death rate” (in deaths per 1000 population per year) = actual death rate – 4 .
Using data from the UN Population Division (see: http://esa.un.org/unpp/index.asp?panel=2 ) it has been possible to calculate 1990-2005 “avoidable deaths” (avoidable mortality, excess deaths, excess mortality, deaths that did nit have to happen) for every country in the World.
The 1950-2005 excess mortality totals [and independently estimated 1950-2005 under-5 infant mortality data in square brackets] are 1,303 million [878 million] (the World); 1,248 million [853 million] (the non-European World]; 55 million [25 million] (the European World); and 0.6 BILLION [0.4 BILLION] (the Muslim World) – a Third World Holocaust and a Muslim Holocaust 100 times greater than the World War 2 Jewish Holocaust (6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) or the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengali Holocaust, the man-made 1943-1945 Bengal Famine in which the British deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death in Bengal and the adjoining provinces of Assam, Orissa and Bihar (see the January 2008 BBC broadcast involving me, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/bengalfamine_programme.html ).
These estimates are resolutely ignored by Mainstream media, politicians and academia in a continuing process of holocaust ignoring i.e. functional holocaust denial.
Occupation and mass avoidable mortality.
Humans have evolved altruism towards the young in family groups (as cogently discussed in “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins) but that altruism falls off as you move to humans further away from family and tribe. Indeed our chimpanzee cousins perpetrate horrific attacks on fellow chimpanzees violating their tribal territory. As the data below indicates, Foreign Occupation is a major contributor to avoidable mortality – foreign rulers do not have the same intrinsic regard for their conquered subjects as indigenous rulers.
The horrific consequences of the pre-Invasion Sanctions on Iraqi infant mortality are revealed by UN Population Division data for Iraq and its impoverished but mostly un-occupied and peaceful neighbour Syria (see: http://esa.un.org/unpp/ ). Back in about 1950 the "under-5 infant deaths per 1,000 births" in newly-independent, post-European colonialism Iraq and Syria was a catastrophic 200; by 1990 (with both countries under Ba'athist dictatorships) it had dramatically fallen to about 50 and 44, respectively; after the US-UK-Israeli bombing and Sanctions began in 1990, this rate doubled rapidly in Iraq but kept declining in peaceful and only partially Israeli-occupied Syria; NOW it is 105 for "US-liberated", oil-rich Occupied Iraq (UN Population data, 2006 revision, prior to the installation of the Maliki Puppet regime that has been minimizing Iraqi deaths: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/34979/42/ ) and 18 for impoverished, resource-poor, Ba'athist dictatorship Syria.
There has been huge avoidable mortality associated with Portuguese colonialism, post-colonial hegemony, and neo-colonialism - the consequences of Portuguese colonial subjugation did not simply disappear when the Occupier forces left.
The summary data provided below is of post-1950 excess mortality/ 2005 population (both in millions, m) and expressed as a percentage (%); this ratio is given for the Occupier (Portugal), for each country occupied and as a total for all the countries subject to Portuguese occupation post-1945.
Countries with a substantial Muslim population are in bold.
Portugal [0.429m/10.080m = 4.3%] - Angola [9.207m/14.533m = 63.4%], Cape Verde [0.099m/0.482m = 20.5%], Guinea-Bissau [0.945m/1.584m = 59.7%], Macao [0.036m/0.472m = 7.6%], Mozambique [12.462m/19.495m = 63.9%], São Tome and Príncipe [0.039m/0.169m = 23.1%], Timor Leste*[0.694m/0.857m = 81.0%], total = 23.482m/37.592 = 62.5%. [1].
[1]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 1997; see also Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (1998 lecture notes): http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/2008/08/body-count-global-avoidable-mortality.html .