14 DAY TRIAL // Since 1979, the research program – Uppsala Conflict Database Program (UCDP), at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, at Uppsala University in Sweden, releases its annual review, and this year's results are quite encouraging: the number of conflicts stopped rising and the number of people killed has significantly decreased since the early 1990s.
The researchers have innovated this year, by looking into non-state conflicts, and concluded that the situation is worst in countries where the state power isn't strong enough, but that the number of people killed worldwide has decreased.
The most seriously affected region by this type of violence, has been and still is Africa, with a total of 74% of conflicts between non-state groups taking place here, since the end of the cold war.
These are usually conflicts between several clans and tribes – mostly small organized groups that cause violence, and they affect especially the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan.
Therése Pettersson, a project director at UCDP, says that in these countries, the non-state conflicts have been fueled by the actions of the state, and sometimes also of neighboring states.
The researchers have noticed many cases in which the state has favored certain groups over other, with violent power struggles ensuing, and the countries that seem to be the less affected by this kind of conflict are democracies but also strongly authoritarian states.
The worst-case scenarios always happen in so-called anocracies – neither democratic nor authoritarian states.
“The fact that two thirds of all non-state conflicts take place in unstable regimes is a clear sign that the existence of weak states is a major problem,” says Pettersson.
In the second half of the 1990s, the number of non-state conflicts rose and by the 2000s it went back down, but in 2008, the trend was broken, because, with a 100% increase in the number of non-state conflicts, that year became one of the most violent since the end of the cold war (35 non-state conflicts registered around the world).
“But in general there are great differences from one year to another when it comes to this type of violence.
“Conflicts often flare up suddenly and are over in a few months.
“This makes it difficult to discern any clear trends over time,” remarks Pettersson.
In its annual “States in Armed Conflict” survey, the UCDP has recorded rising numbers of conflicts, over the last five years.
For example, in 2003 there were 29 active conflicts involving states, and their number had risen to 37 by 2008 – a 27% increase.
The number of conflicts first decreased in 2009, with 36 active conflicts reported, and Professor Peter Wallensteen, director of the Conflict Database Program, said that even if this drop is small, hopefully it is a turning point.
Nevertheless, the figures should be interpreted with caution, because the number of conflicts is still high, six of them are classified as wars, and there are not so many peace negotiations underway.
Peter Wallensteen said that “we’ve known for some time that the number of people killed in conflicts is decreasing.
“New data show now that the number of fatalities in war dropped no less than 85 percent between 1990 and 2005.”
Even if the numbers are somewhat higher over the last couple of years, they remain at a level far lower than in the early 1990s.
Lotta Themnér, another of the program’s project directors, said that “the highest numbers of deaths are found in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia, countries that are often associated with terrorism,” but overall, the conflicts have been less bloody over the last few years in terms the number of people killed.
The early 1990s are a reference because at that time, thousands of people died in the conflicts in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Pettersson says that there is a clear parallel here to developments in armed conflicts involving states as main actors.
“In comparison with conflicts where the state is involved, non-state conflicts entail considerably fewer deaths on average.
“A state army often has substantially more resources and better organization than these groups have.
“Merely looking at conflicts that involve states does not yield a complete picture of organized violence in the world,” adds Pettersson.