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Fewer wars and cases of genocide
02/2007
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[ Security ]
Fewer wars and cases of genocide
From 2002 to 2005, the number of wars and organised violent conflicts worldwide fell from 66 to 56. The drop relates almost exclusively to violent conflicts that involved organised groups – but not government forces – with at least 25 annual dead. The number of wars with government intervention, on the other hand, has barely changed, as the Human Security Centre of the University of British Columbia reports. The number of violent disputes has particularly declined in Africa, where, according to the Centre, the number of wars with state involvement fell from 13 to five since 2002, whereas armed disputes between non-governmental parties sank from 24 to 14.
However, violence has increased in most other world regions, the Centre reports in its Human Security Brief 2006. Africa is no longer the most strife-torn world region, with Central and South Asia now worse hit. The Brief is an update of the Human Security Report 2005 published last year (see D+C 1/2006, p. 38), the next extensive report is due at the end of this year.
The number of genocidal mass murders has also declined considerably since 1989. The Centre names Darfur as the only case of genocide in 2005, while in 1989 politically motivated mass killings were going on in ten countries, among them Afghanistan, Angola, El Salvador and Guatemala.
Nonetheless, the world has not become a safer place for civilians. According to the researchers, the number of attacks on innocent parties without any means of defence has risen by 56 % since the end of the Cold War. This increase is largely attributed to the sharp rise in terrorist attacks, which are said to have tripled since 2000. However, the number of fatalities from attacks on civilians has decreased considerably since the mid-1990s, confirming the trend of genocidal mass murder and full-fledged war becoming less common in recent years. Nonetheless, the Centre stresses that the data on battle deaths and among civilians is not very precise, and only indicates trends.
In the first decade after the end of the Cold War, many new wars broke out – more than twice as many as in the 1980s. But, according to the Human Security Brief, even more wars ended. Accordingly, there were 40 % fewer state-based wars altogether in 2003 than in 1992. A second important trend in the 1990s was that, for the first time, more wars were ended by negotiation between opponents than by one party’s victory. That trend has picked up momentum since the turn of the millennium. From 2000 to 2005, talks ended 17 violent conflicts, and armed triumph only three. The downside are statistics that show that conflicts put to end by negotiated settlement are twice as likely to re-erupt as are those which saw one side win.
There are indications, however, that peace settlements have become more stable than before. In the past six years on average, more wars ended every year than new ones broke out. There is no guarantee for this trend continuing, but Andrew Mack, head of the Human Security Centre, says that “in a world that spends a trillion dollars a year on defence a modest shift of resources from the military to support conflict prevention, peacemaking and peacebuilding policies, could help stop today’s potential threats from becoming tomorrow’s violent realities.” (ell)
On the Internet:
http://www.humansecuritybrief.info
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