Published 7 June 2024 at 15.56
Domestic. Not since World War II have there been so many armed conflicts in the world. This is shown by new statistics from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, UCDP, at Uppsala University. However, Sweden is not yet classified as a conflict zone – despite the gang wars.
Share the article
TwittraShare
In 2023, the number of conflicts in which states were involved amounted to 59, which is the highest number ever since the statistics began to be recorded in 1946.
Previous peaks were the years 2020 and 2022, each with 56 conflicts.
At the same time, the number of people killed in conflict violence was halved compared to the previous year. This is mainly because the incredibly bloody war in the Tigray region of Ethiopia ended at the end of 2022.
– However, we still see several unusually deadly wars going on, for example the war in Ukraine with close to 71,000 deaths last year, as well as Israel's war against Hamas where UCDP recorded over 22,000 deaths in 2023, says Shawn Davies, analyst at UCDP.
< p>Although the total number of combat-related deaths worldwide was halved last year compared to the year before, from 310,000 to 154,000, 2023 is one of the bloodiest years since UCDP's data collection on conflict deaths began in 1989.
– Only three years have been more deadly than 2023. In addition to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, 2021 and 2022 are on that list, says Shawn Davies in a press release.
In 2023, there were nine wars (conflict with more than 1,000 deaths per year), which is one more than the year before, and the highest number since 2017. Most wars took place in Africa, where the civil war in Sudan that broke out in 2023 was the third deadliest conflict of the year, after the wars in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine.
In many conflicts, the civilian population also becomes a target for the warring parties. Although UCDP recorded a decrease in the total number of deaths from unilateral violence against civilians last year, thousands of civilians fell victim to this type of violence in the conflicts in Sudan, Burkina Faso, Israel and Myanmar, among others. In total, just over 10,000 civilian deaths were registered in this type of targeted violence, compared to 12,000 the year before.
– For the ninth year in a row, IS, also called Daesh, was the group that killed the most civilians in unilateral violence, although the total number decreased sharply compared to the previous year. The group was active in 16 different countries where they carried out various acts such as shootings, beheadings and large coordinated suicide bombings, says Therese Pettersson, analyst and project manager at UCDP.
In conflicts between groups where the state is not involved, so-called non-state conflicts, the UCDP noted a slight decline in 2023. A total of 20,900 deaths were recorded in 75 non-state conflicts.
– However, it is too early to say that it is a trend break. The last ten years are the ten deadliest when it comes to this type of violence, which in recent years has almost exclusively come to be about violent confrontations between gangs and cartels, says Therese Pettersson.
The majority of non -state conflicts take place in Latin America, and the bloodiest have been in Mexico and Brazil where the violence is concentrated in cities and along important smuggling routes for drug trafficking.
– But even in Europe this type of violence has become more present, and in 2023 the first ever active gang conflict was recorded in Europe when two rival gangs in the French city of Marseille came into conflict. Many of the patterns that characterize gang violence in UCDP's statistics are also noted in Sweden, for example waves of violence that are triggered by divisions and alliance formations, and the presence of increasingly younger perpetrators, says Garoun Engström, analyst at UCDP.
Yet so long, however, the conflicts in Sweden do not reach the level of active conflict according to UCDP's definition. According to this definition, which has become standard in the field of peace and conflict research, conflicts between two specific parties that cause at least 25 combat-related deaths in a calendar year are included. The definition of war is conflicts that lead to at least 1,000 deaths in a year.
The statistics from 2023 that are now being published will be analyzed and reported in a report that will be published in the Journal of Peace Research during the month of July.
© UU
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.