About 150,000 people have been killed in the last half year as a result of the war in Darfur, either directly from violence or indirectly from disease and malnutrition, according to a comparison of various estimates, and about 200,000-300,000 are projected to die of disease and malnutrition in the next several months according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. With an average remaining life expectancy of roughly 40 years, that's 10-18 million life-years. In addition, about 2-4 million people have been raped, wounded, or displaced from their homes, affecting them to an extent equivalent to, let's say, 4 years of their lives, or around 8-16 million life-years.

Human News aims to devote 1 character to each 40,000 life-years, or 1000 average lives. Thus, this story has about 26 million / 40,000 = 650 characters.