The British-based Web site - set up in 2003 before the start of the U.S.-led invasion - seeks to commemorate those who have died with entries that give the person's name whenever possible.
"It's just an act of humanity to record and memorialise the dead," Slobada said. "We've done it for soldiers for centuries."
While Iraq Body Count aims to provide an irrefutable minimum toll - currently 81,000 to 88,000 - others use methods more like IRC's Congo survey to extrapolate the full number of casualties.
The Iraqi Health Ministry and the World Health Organisation said this year they calculated 151,000 violent deaths between 2003 and 2006.
A team from Johns Hopkins University in the United States estimated as many as 654,000 deaths beyond the norm in Iraq during the same period.
A much simpler survey by British pollsters Opinion Research Business (ORB) put Iraqis killed by the war at approximately 1.03 million, based on a finding that 18 percent of the 2,414 adults they interviewed cited at least one death in the household due to the war.
ORB calculated its number using Iraq's last census in 1997 which documented 4.05 million households.
WAR-RELATED DEATHS
The IRC reports highlight the fact hunger and disease caused by a conflict often kill more people than the violence itself.
In Congo, for instance, intentional deaths count for less than 10 percent of the total. Most people die when they are cut off from food supplies or medical facilities, or because the hea,th system has been nearly eliminated by the conflict.
The IRC findings from Congo appear to mirror experiences in Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone; all still struggling to recover from brutal conflicts.
And the remnants of war in Congo have pushed up the death rate despite the ceasefire.
Feared militias, government soldiers and renegade tribal fighters still prey on civilians and keep them from crops, safe water and health centres in the volatile east of the country.
Given the scale of the disaster - some 45,000 people a month dying from war-related hunger and disease, or the equivalent of a major football stadium - why doesn't Congo get more attention?
"People aren't dying dramatically," Brennan said. "They're dying quietly and anonymously ... In the eyes of Western powers, Congo doesn't represent major political or economic interest."
