[ahlatimer]

It took a bit of digging, but here's a document on how the UN estimates mortality: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/adultmort/Comp...

You're sort of taking the quote from the US ambassador to the UN out of context. The US ambassador to the UN said that the UN Security Council can't even issue so much as a press release without US agreement. Never mind that this may just have been hyperbole, but it would make sense that the UN Security Council may have trouble doing things without the backing of the world's most powerful military. It says nothing, really, about what the UN as a whole, or the body who forms the mortality statistics specifically, is capable of doing or not doing without US backing.

[Alex3917]

Fair point about the UN, but I think that isn't actually the methodology behind the mortality estimates. That's just an overview of different ways the UN gives for estimating mortality, but it doesn't actually provide any information on which of these (if any) the UN is using for each of the actual mortality statistics they list.