DONDENA Seminar - Diego Alburez-Gutierrez

You may follow the seminar at the following link.

“Political Violence and Family Bereavement in Gaza, 2000-2025” 

SPEAKER: Diego Alburez-Gutierrez (MPIDR)

ABSTRACT: The Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated territories in the world, has experienced recurring escalations of political violence. On 7 October 2023, a Hamas-led attack in Israel killed approximately 1,200 people and took 251 hostages; the ensuing Israeli operation has resulted in 70,000 direct deaths reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health between 2023 and 2025--a number widely considered to be an undercount. We use demographic models to quantify the family bereavement in Gaza resulting from political violence between 2000 and 2025. Our results show that a single violent death bereaved, on average, 37 family members in 2025. Kinship ties amplify the reach of each individual death: By the end of 2025, around 69% of Gaza's living population had lost at least one close or distant relative to political violence, and 22.0% had lost a parent, child, or sibling. Adjusting for under-reporting raises these shares to 77% and 31% of the 2025 population. The prevalence of bereavement is also substantial among vulnerable age groups: 8% of children had lost a parent and 25% of adults aged 65 and over had lost at least one adult child to political violence by the end of 2025. I will conclude this presentation by considering the implications of demographic bereavement for public health, social reconciliation, and historical memory.

BIO: Diego Alburez-Gutierrez leads the Kinship Inequalities Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany. His work explores kinship structures, family bereavement, and intergenerational relations. Diego helps develop the R packages DemoKin and rsocsim for modeling kinship dynamics using mathematical and simulation models. He earned his Ph.D. at the London School of Economics in 2019.