Lies, damned lies and statistics: justice-orientated counter-storytelling about aid flow to Gaza in 2023

Abstract

Background: the escalating hostilities with Israel that began on 7 October 2023 have intensified the already dire situation in Gaza, with power outages and severe shortages of medicines and health supplies crippling hospitals' ability to deliver life-saving care. Using Gaza as a case study, in this article we introduce the concept of “justice-orientated statistical counter-stories”.

Methods: we argue that traditional statistics distort reality, hide disparities, and generally misrepresent social and environmental issues. We show that by making “adjustments” based on identifiable flaws in raw statistical datasets we can rectify this problem and offer an alternative view. We illustrate the principles of justice-oriented statistical counter-stories by examining the aid flow to Gaza in 2023 from major OECD countries.

Results: our justice-orientated analytical lens shows how the rankings for OECD countries shift significantly when we factor in donor nations’ GDP and military aid donations to Israel, who are propagating a war against the Palestinian people. Our paper also identifies some of the key methodological challenges in making such adjustments (issues of aggregated data, asymmetrical data periods and unavailable data).

Conclusion: we conclude by emphasising the broader implications of “justice-orientated statistical counter-stories” for understanding not only aid flows, but global development and the representation of social and environmental issues.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Chandni Jacob: orcid.org/0000-0002-2024-0074

ORCID for Jessica Boxall: orcid.org/0009-0009-1912-0380

ORCID for Emily Bastable: orcid.org/0009-0006-5705-6875

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