The cost of the conflict

While statistics are necessary they do not tell the whole story.
Behind these statistics lie the human tragedies, the broken families and the heartbroken loved ones.

But as an example of the cost of the war lets look at one area, West Belfast.

West Belfast has suffered greatly during the 30-year conflict and a legacy of that conflict is that many within the area continue to suffer.

Conflict related deaths

Electoral Ward	Deaths
Falls	57
Clonard	56
Whiterock	55
Upper Springfield	46
Andersonstown	28
Glen Rd	25
Shankill	24
Falls Park	20
Beechmount	20
Glencolin	20

Of the 3609 people killed in the conflict, the total number of fatalities of residents from within the West Belfast area is 568.

In other words, some 16% of the people killed during the conflict lived in the West of the city.

The scale of the problem can be gauged from the following list which shows areas were 20 or more residents were actually killed in their own area:

Children

Postal area	Deaths	Deaths
	Under 25	Under 18
BT12	106	37
BT11	66	23
Total	172	60

The following table shows troubles-related deaths of children and young people under the ages of 18 and 25 by postal area:

This means that 30% of those residents of the postal boundaries of BT11 and BT12 who died because of the conflict were under the age of 25, while a staggering 10.6% were children under the age of 18.

Of all of the children from the entire conflict whose deaths were conflict related 23% came from West Belfast

Injury

An estimated 40,000 people have been physically injured in the conflict.

Around 6,400 of these people come from West Belfast.

The scale

It is estimated that if these figures were to be translated to an area the size of Britain then 150,000 people would have lost their lives.

The above data reprinted by permission of the Cost the Troubles Study.

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