Methodological Guidance Concentric approach Taking into account the challenges in collecting and verifying information to document individual deaths in an armed conflict context and the consequent need to supplement documented individual cases with statistical estimates, a concentric approach will be followed to facilitate the methodology development, data collection and compilation of the indicator. • Counting documented direct deaths - deaths that are fully documented by existing casualty recording organizations17 and other relevant entities on the ground. These include United Nations missions and other international organisations active in conflict-settings that collect data on conflict-related deaths in pursuance of their mandate. Documented cases provide verified information on each death, drawing potentially on a range of sources including government agencies, national statistical offices, national human rights institutions, non-governmental organizations, media (including social media) and other civil society sources. Given the mandate of UN entities and corresponding casualty recording practices, data on deaths of civilians are generally more systematically collected. OHCHR, in cooperation with all relevant stakeholders, will continue to explore the possibility for the indicator to cover other categories. • Estimating undocumented direct deaths - depending on the availability and quality of data over the course of the armed conflict, statistical surveys and techniques may be used to estimate the magnitude of direct conflict-related deaths, adding statistical estimates of undocumented cases to the documented cases.18 National datasets with sufficiently well documented direct deaths constitute an essential source for further statistical analysis and estimations of undocumented direct deaths. • Estimating indirect deaths - Indirect deaths would typically fall outside the scope of common casualty recording practices (that rather focus on direct deaths). They may be captured using additional administrative records and/or statistical surveys allowing the measurement of excess mortality, namely all the deaths (direct and indirect) that would not have occurred in time of peace, as defined and measured by epidemiologists.19 Existing data must be updated regularly and retrospectively reflecting the emergence of new data over time. 6