In 2023, the number of conflicts involving several states increased to 59. the highest since data collection began in 1946. Previous peaks were recorded in 2020 and 2022, with 56 conflicts in each.

At the same time, the number of deaths from conflict violencee decreased by half compared to the previous year, which happened mainly due to the end of the bloody war in the Ethiopian Tigray region at the end of 2022.

“However, we can still see some unusually deadly wars, such as war in Ukraine, almost 71 thousand deaths last year, and the war Israel vs Hamaswhere UCDP recorded more than 22,000 deaths in 2023,” UCDP Senior Analyst Sean Davis explained in a statement.

Although the total number of deaths from organized violence worldwide fell by half last year compared to the previous year, from 310 thousand to 154 thousand, 2023 was one of the deadliest years since UCDP began collecting data on deaths in conflicts in 1989.

“Only three years have been deadlier than 2023. Except for the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.2021 and 2022 are on that list,” Davis continues.

There have been nine wars in 2023 (conflicts that kill more than a thousand people a year), one more than the previous year and the highest since 2017. LMost of the wars took place in Africa. and the Sudanese civil war, which erupted in 2023, was the third deadliest conflict of the year, behind the wars in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine.

Attack on civilians

In many conflicts, civilians are also targeted by parties to the conflict. Although the UCDP recorded a decrease in the overall number of deaths due to one-sided violence against civilians last year, thousands of civilians have been victims of this type of violence in conflicts in Sudan, Burkina Faso, Israel, Palestine, Myanmar, among the others. In total, just over 10,000 civilian deaths were recorded as a result of this type of selective violence, compared to 12,000 the previous year.

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“For the ninth year in a row, the Islamic State, also known as Daesh, was the group that killed the most civilians in one-sided violence, although the total number was down sharply from the previous year. The group operated in 16 different countries. where he carried out various actions such as shootings, beheadings and large coordinated suicide attacks,” says Teresa Pettersson, senior analyst and project director at UCDP.

Non-state conflicts are decreasing

In conflicts between groups in which the state does not intervene, known as non-state conflicts, the UCDP has observed slight decline in 2023. Total registered 20,900 dead in 75 non-state conflicts.

“However, it is too early to say that this is a reversal of the trend. The last ten years have been ten deadliest types of violence of this typewhich in recent years has almost exclusively involved violent clashes between gangs and cartels,” says Pettersson.

Most non-state conflicts occur in Latin America, of which the bloodiest occurred in Mexico and Brazil, where violence is concentrated in cities and along major drug trafficking routes.

Gun violence in Europe: Marseille and Sweden

“But this type of violence has also become more common in Europe and In 2023, the first active conflict between gangs in Europe was recorded.when two rival gangs came into conflict in the French city of Marseille.

“Many patterns characterizing gang violence UCDP statistics can also be observed in Sweden, since waves of violence caused by divisions and alliancesand the emergence of increasingly younger criminals,” says Harun Engström, senior analyst at UCDP.

However, there are still conflicts in Sweden do not reach the level of active conflict defined by the UCDP. This definition, which has become standard in the field of peace and conflict studies, includes conflicts between two specific parties that During a calendar year, they cause at least 25 deaths during combat operations. War is defined as a conflict that results in at least 1,000 deaths per year.

The now published statistics for 2023 will be analyzed and presented in report which will be published in Journal of Peace Research in July.

UCDP positions itself as the most used source of data on organized violence in the world and the oldest Civil War data collection project still active. He notes that his definition of armed conflict has become a global standard for the systematic definition and study of conflict.

(Europe Press)