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I am grateful to the many researchers who create the conflict and peace data we use across our work at Our World in Data. Special thanks to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program whose data I used for most of the visualizations in this thread.
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How common are armed conflict and peace between and within countries? How is this changing over time? Explore research and data on war and peace.
If you now would like to see more charts on peace and conflict, check out our Conflict data explorers: ourworldindata.org/war-and-peac...ourworldindata.org/war-and-peac...
While the decline in violence has been uneven across countries, relationships between countries have become more peaceful around the world. Violent rivalries have steadily declined, and bilateral cooperation has spread.
Some countries are much more affected by conflict than others. In a large number of countries, few to no people die due to conflicts. Other countries, however, see dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of deaths per year.
After World War II, hundreds of thousands of people died in conflicts each year. Conflict deaths surged again in the 1970s and 1980s, though peaking at lower levels. They fell to much lower levels in the 1990s and have stayed below previous peaks in the decades since — if barely.
Armed conflict is a rare cause of death in most years. It is even less common than other causes of violent death, such as homicides and suicides. However, the number of conflict deaths can change a lot from year to year.
Among armed conflicts, conflicts between states are rare; intrastate conflicts and one-sided violence are more frequent; and non-state conflicts have become the most common type of conflict.
Armed conflict is common. Recently, at least 150 armed conflicts were ongoing each year. This number is up from previous decades, but even then, it rarely fell below 100, and there has been no year without armed conflict for centuries.