Editor’s Introduction

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

View correction statement:

Correction

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://doi.org/10.1080/23740973.2024.2307740).

Notes

1 The total number of conflicts as captured by the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset has been consistently on the rise since 2011, totalling 137 in 2022, among the highest in three decades. UCDP disaggregates between state-based (i.e., at least one conflict party is a state) and non-state-based armed conflicts (i.e., conflict parties are exclusively NSAGs), and defines an armed conflict as the ‘use of armed force between two parties’ that ‘results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in one calendar year’. Conflict ‘parties’ can be either state- or non-state-based depending on the type of conflict under consideration. Based on this definition, each country can have several different ongoing conflicts per year. This methodology explains the larger number of conflicts accounted for by UCDP compared to those identified in The Armed Conflict Survey 2023, which adopts the country as the primary unit of analysis. See UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset Version 23.1 and UCDP Non-State Conflict Dataset Version 23.1. Nils Petter Gleditsch et al., ‘Armed Conflict 1946–2001: A New Dataset’, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 39, no. 5, 2002, pp. 615–37; Shawn Davies, Therese Pettersson and Magnus Öberg, ‘Organized Violence 1989–2022 and the Return of Conflicts Between States?’, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 60, no. 4, 2023; Ralph Sundberg, Kristine Eck and Joakim Kreutz, ‘Introducing the UCDP Non-state Conflict Dataset’, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 49, no. 2, 2012; and Uppsala Universitet, ‘UCDP Definitions’.

2 IISS calculations based on data reported as of 26 July 2023. This data refers to funding from multilateral organisations and governments only. See FTS, ‘Total Reported Funding 2021’; and FTS, ‘Total Reported Funding 2022’.

3 IISS calculations based on data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), www.acleddata.com.

4 For more details on both trends, see ‘The Long Aftermath of Armed Conflicts’, in IISS, The Armed Conflict Survey 2021 (Abingdon: Routledge for the IISS, 2021), pp. 22–8.

5 This data is drawn from the annual ICRC survey on armed groups completed in June 2023. The ICRC uses the generic term ‘armed group’ for a group that is not a state but has the capacity to cause violence that is of humanitarian concern. Armed groups also include those groups that qualify as conflict parties to a non-international armed conflict according to the Geneva Conventions, which the ICRC defines as ‘non-state armed groups’. See Matthew Bamber-Zryd, ‘ICRC Engagement with Armed Groups in 2023’, ICRC Humanitarian Law & Policy, 20 October 2023.

6 In regions like Sub-Saharan Africa, there are currently more armed conflicts with external intervention and regional dimensions than purely internal ones (i.e., confined within the borders of one country).

7 IISS calculations based on data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), www.acleddata.com.