Sven Torfinn / Magnum Photos

O V E R V I E W

war and peace in

the 21st century

Introduction largely ignored the 100-odd conflicts that have quietly

The first Human Security Report presents a ended since 1988. During this period, more wars stopped

comprehensive and evidence-based portrait of than started.

global security. It identifies and examines major The extent of the change in global security following

trends in global political violence, asks what fac- the end of the Cold War has been remarkable:

tors drive these trends and examines some of ° The number of armed conflicts around the world has
the consequences. It poses major challenges to declined by more than 40% since the early 1990s (see
conventional wisdom. Figure 1.1 in Part I).2
° Between 1991 (the high point for the post–World War II
Over the past dozen years, the global security climate period) and 2004, 28 armed struggles for self-determi-
has changed in dramatic, positive, but largely unheralded nation started or restarted, while 43 were contained or
ways. Civil wars, genocides and international crises have ended. There were just 25 armed secessionist conflicts
all declined sharply. International wars, now only a small under way in 2004, the lowest number since 1976.3

minority of all conflicts, have been in steady decline for a ° Notwithstanding the horrors of Rwanda, Srebrenica
and elsewhere, the number of genocides and politi-
much longer period, as have military coups and the aver-
cides plummeted by 80% between the 1988 high point
age number of people killed per conflict per year.1
and 2001 (Figure 1.11).
° International crises, often harbingers of war, declined
by more than 70% between 1981 and 2001 (Figure 1.5).
The number of genocides and ° The dollar value of major international arms trans-
politicides plummeted by 80% fers fell by 33% between 1990 and 2003 (Figure 1.10).
between 1988 and 2001. Global military expenditure and troop numbers de-
clined sharply in the 1990s as well.
° The number of refugees dropped by some 45% be-
The wars that dominated the headlines of the 1990s tween 1992 and 2003, as more and more wars came to
were real—and brutal—enough. But the global media have an end (Figure 3.1).4

HUMAN SECURITY REPORT 2005 1

 ° Five out of six regions in the developing world saw ° The gravest threat to human security is
a net decrease in core human rights abuses between international terrorism.
1994 and 2003 (Figures 2.6 and 2.7). ° 90% of those killed in today’s wars are civilians.7
° 5 million people were killed in wars in the 1990s.
The positive changes noted above date from the end
° 2 million children were killed in wars during the
of the Cold War. Other changes can be traced back to
last decade.
the 1950s: ° 80% of refugees are women and children.
° Women are the primary victims of war.
° The average number of battle-deaths per conflict per
° There are 300,000 child soldiers serving around the
year—the best measure of the deadliness of warfare—
world today.
has been falling dramatically but unevenly since the
1950s. In 1950, for example, the average armed con- Not one of these claims is based on reliable data. All are
flict killed 38,000 people; in 2002 the figure was 600, suspect; some are demonstrably false. Yet they are widely
a 98% decline. believed because they reinforce popular assumptions. They
° The period since the end of World War II is the longest flourish in the absence of official figures to contradict them
interval of uninterrupted peace between the major
and conjure a picture of global security trends that is gross-
powers in hundreds of years.5
ly distorted. And they often drive political agendas.
° The number of actual and attempted military coups
A consistent theme in the Human Security Report 2005
has been declining for more than 40 years. In 1963
is the inadequacy of available data, especially comparable
there were 25 coups and attempted coups around the
year-on-year data that can be used to document and mea-
world, the highest number in the post–World War II
sure national, regional and global trends. In some cases,
period. In 2004 there were only 10 coup attempts—a
60% decline. All of them failed.6 data are simply non-existent.

International terrorism is the only form of politi-

cal violence that appears to be getting worse, but the International terrorism is the only
data are contested. Although some datasets have shown form of political violence that ap-
an overall decline in international terrorist incidents pears to be getting worse, but the
since the early 1980s (Figure 1.12), the most recent data data are contested.
suggest a dramatic increase in the number of high-
casualty attacks since the September 11 attacks on the
US in 2001. To address these challenges when preparing this re-
port, the Human Security Centre has drawn on a variety
Myths and misunderstandings of data compiled by research institutions around the world
Public understanding of global security is hampered by and commissioned a major public opinion poll on popular
many myths and misunderstandings about its nature. attitudes to security in 11 countries. The Human Security
Some of these originated in the media; others were prop- Centre also commissioned a new dataset from Uppsala
agated, or reiterated by, international organisations and University’s Conflict Data Program. The Uppsala/Human
NGOs. Such myths include claims that: Security Centre dataset is the most comprehensive yet
created on political violence around the world. Its find-
° The number of armed conflicts is increasing. ings, the first of which are published in this report, will
° Wars are getting deadlier. provide key trend data for future editions of the Human
° The number of genocides is increasing. Security Report.

2 HUMAN SECURITY REPORT 2005

Structure and contents this period, every decade saw sharp increases in political
The Human Security Report 2005 has a five-part structure: violence in the rest of the world.
Between 1946 and 1991 the number of state-based armed
° Part I: The changing face of global violence looks conflicts being fought worldwide trebled (Figure 1.2), with
mainly at long-term global and regional trends in po- most of the killing taking place in poor countries (Figure 1.9).
litical violence.
Moreover, although it is true that the major powers did
° Part II: The human security audit presents the find-
not fight each other during this period, their post–World
ings of the new dataset on political violence around
War II history has been anything but peaceful. Indeed, the
the world. It also examines other threats to human
UK, France, the US and the Soviet Union/Russia top the
security.
list of countries involved in international wars in the last
° Part III: Assault on the vulnerable explores the
60 years (Figure 1.3).
impact of political violence on refugees, women
and children.
° Part IV: Counting the indirect costs of war examines
some of the long-term, indirect effects of war. The end of the Cold War brought
° Part V: Why the dramatic decline in armed conflict? remarkable changes to the global
examines the major drivers of the radical improvement security climate.
in global security since the end of the Cold War.

‘Realist’ scholars attributed the Long Peace between the

The period following the end of major powers to the security-enhancing effect of a bipolar
World War II was the longest interval security system underpinned by mutual nuclear deterrence.
in many centuries without a war Many worried that the end of the Cold War would usher in
between the major powers. a new era of severe crises, even wars, between the major
powers.8 But today, 15 years after the end of the Cold War,
the number of international crises is just a small fraction of
The following discussion briefly outlines the main the 1981 high-point (Figure 1.5) and the prospect of war be-
themes of the report and reviews some key findings from tween the major powers has never seemed more remote.
the various sections. The end of the Cold War brought remarkable chang-
es to the global security climate. Security pessimists saw
War trends the upsurge of secessionist violence in the former Soviet
In the early 1990s, at precisely the point that media com- Union, the dissolution of the Yugoslav federation, genocide
mentators in the West began to fret about a worldwide ex- in Rwanda and other ethnic confrontations as portents of
plosion in ethnic violence, the number of armed conflicts an increasingly violent future.
began to drop (Figure 1.1). This little-noticed decline, which This pessimism was quite unfounded. Between 1992
has been carefully tracked by the research community, has and 2003, the last year for which complete data are cur-
continued ever since. rently available, the number of armed conflicts (Figure 1.2)
The five-decade period following the end of World War dropped by 40%. The number of wars—the most deadly
II was the longest interval in many centuries without a war category of armed conflict—declined even more sharply.
between the major powers, and scholars sometimes refer In most parts of the world the drop in conflict num-
to it as the ‘Long Peace’. This description is deeply mis- bers started after the end of the Cold War (Figure 1.2). But
leading. Although no wars between the major powers in in two important regions the decline started earlier. In the

HUMAN SECURITY REPORT 2005 3

Middle East and North Africa, political violence began to nal intervention and an abundance of cheap weapons, plus
decrease at the beginning of the 1980s. In part this was the effects of a major decline in per capita foreign assis-
because the front-line Arab states recognised that fight- tance for much of the 1990s, mean that armed conflicts in
ing wars with a conventionally superior and nuclear- these countries are difficult to avoid, contain or end.
armed Israel was a fruitless endeavour, and in part be- Moreover, violent conflict exacerbates the very con-
cause ruthless state repression was succeeding in crush- ditions that gave rise to it in the first place, creating
ing domestic insurgencies. a classic ‘conflict trap’ from which escape is extraordi-
In East Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania the decline in narily difficult. Unsurprisingly, sustaining peace settle-
both the number and deadliness of armed conflicts started ments is a major challenge in many of the continent’s
in the mid-1970s (Figures 1.2 and 1.9). This was a period post-conflict countries.
in which massive external involvement in the region’s con- Yet even in Africa there are signs of hope. The new
flicts was rapidly winding down, and in which countries in Uppsala/Human Security Centre dataset shows that the
the region were experiencing the highest rates of economic number of conflicts in Africa in which a government was
growth in the world. As Part V of this report shows, the one of the warring parties declined from 15 to 10 between
probability of war decreases as national income, and hence 2002 and 2003 (Figure 2.1). The number of cases of ‘one-
state capacity, increases (Figure 5.4). sided’ violence—defined as the slaughter of at least 25 ci-
vilians in the course of a year and called one-sided because
The challenge of Africa the victims can’t fight back—declined from 17 to 11 (Figure
Most of the world’s armed conflicts now take place in sub- 2.1), a drop of 35%. Meanwhile, reported fatalities from all
Saharan Africa (Figure 1.2). At the turn of the 21st century forms of political violence were down by more than 24%
more people were being killed in wars in this region than (Figure 2.4).
in the rest of the world combined (Figure 1.9). These changes reflect the increased involvement of
the international community and African regional or-
ganisations in conflict resolution and post-conflict re-
Violent conflict exacerbates the construction, rather than major changes in the underly-
conditions that gave rise to it in the ing risk factors. Africa remains the world’s most conflict-
first place, creating a ‘conflict trap’ prone continent.
from which escape is extraordinarily
difficult. Wars have fewer victims today
The decline in the numbers killed in wars has been even
more dramatic than the drop in the number of conflicts,
Almost every country across the broad middle belt of although it has taken place over a much longer period and
the continent—from Somalia in the east to Sierra Leone in for quite different reasons.
the west, from Sudan in the north to Angola in the south— The Human Security Report 2005 draws on a new data-
remains trapped in a volatile mix of poverty, crime, unstable set on battle-deaths that occurred between 1946 and 2002
and inequitable political institutions, ethnic discrimination, in conflicts where a government was one of the warring
low state capacity and the ‘bad neighbourhoods’ of other parties. As Figure 1.6 shows, nearly 700,000 people were
crisis-ridden states—all factors associated with increased killed in the wars of 1950, while in 2002 the figure was
risk of armed conflict. 9
just 20,000.
The combination of pervasive poverty, declining GDP This substantial long-term decline in battle-deaths
per capita, poor infrastructure, weak administration, exter- is due primarily to a radical shift in modes of warfare.

4 HUMAN SECURITY REPORT 2005

The wars of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and to a lesser Refugees and displaced persons
degree the 1980s, were characterised by major bat- While the major wars of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s were
tles fought by large armies armed with heavy con- associated with very high death tolls, the available data
ventional weapons and supported by one or other super- suggest that these wars did not generate commensurately
power. large flows of displaced people.10 In fact, the figures in-
Today most wars are fought in poor countries with dicate that the really big increases in people fleeing their
armies that lack heavy conventional weapons—or su- homes in fear of their lives did not start until the 1980s.
perpower patrons. In a typical low-intensity conflict Between 1980 and 1992 the total number of people
weak government forces confront small, ill-trained reb- estimated to have been displaced increased from 16 mil-
el forces equipped with small arms and light weapons. lion to more than 40 million. While the data, especially
Skirmishes and attacks on civilians are preferred to on internally displaced persons, are questionable, there
major engagements. Although these conflicts often in- is little doubt about the remarkable upward trend during
volve gross human rights abuses, they kill relatively few this period.
people compared with the major wars of 20 or more Increased targeting of civilians appears to be a ma-
years ago. jor reason for the huge increase. As one UN report put it,
In addition to low-intensity conflicts, a small num- ‘Refugee movements are no longer side effects of conflict,
ber of high-tech wars have been fought by the US and but in many cases are central to the objectives and tactics
its allies since the end of the Cold War. In the Gulf War, of war.’11
Kosovo and Afghanistan, the huge military advantage
enjoyed by coalition forces, plus increased use of pre-
cision-guided munitions, meant that victory on the The battle-death data demonstrate
battlefield was gained quickly and with relatively few how the world’s deadliest killing
battle-deaths. zones have shifted locale over time.
The current conflict in Iraq is the exception: while
the conventional war that began in 2003 was over quickly
and with relatively few casualties, tens of thousands have While displacement is a humanitarian tragedy and
been killed in the subsequent—and ongoing—urban puts people at greater risk of succumbing to disease and
insurgency. malnutrition, it also prevents many violent deaths. Indeed,
The battle-death data also demonstrate how the had the millions of people displaced in the 1980s and early
world’s deadliest killing zones have shifted locale over time 1990s not fled their homes, hundreds of thousands, pos-
(Figure 1.9): sibly more, would likely have been killed. So the massive
displacement in this period is likely part of the reason for
° From the end of World War II to the mid-1970s, by far
the declining number of battle-deaths.
the greatest numbers of battle-deaths were in East
Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania.
Genocide
° In the 1980s, most of the killing took place in the
Genocides and other deliberate slaughters of civilians are
Middle East and North Africa, Central and South Asia,
and in sub-Saharan Africa. usually counted separately from armed conflicts, on the

° By the turn of the 21st century, sub-Saharan Africa grounds that the killing of unarmed innocents does not
had become the world’s most violent region, expe- constitute warfare.
riencing more battle-deaths than all other regions Such killings usually—but not always—take place
combined. within the context of a war. So if wars decline, we would

HUMAN SECURITY REPORT 2005 5

expect that cases involving the slaughter of civilians would In April 2005 the Bush administration published new
decline as well. This is precisely what has happened, but data showing a dramatic increase in ‘significant’ interna-
the 80% decline in the number of genocides (Figure 1.11) tional terrorist attacks in 2004.
since the end of the Cold War has been twice as great as Despite the relatively low death toll resulting from
the drop in the number of conflicts international terrorism, it is still a major human security
Until now there has been no systematic annual report- concern for several reasons:
ing of the death tolls from such one-sided violence. This
° First, the war on terror has provided a large part of the
omission is addressed by the new Uppsala/Human Security
rationale for major wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Centre dataset discussed in Part II of this report. The data
° Second, as recent opinion survey data show, the US-
for 2002 and 2003 suggest that cases of one-sided violence
led counterterror campaign has been associated with
are as common as cases of state-based armed conflict, but
extraordinarily high levels of anti-Americanism in the
that one-sided violence kills far fewer people.12
Muslim world.13 This has almost certainly increased
the number of potential terrorist recruits.
Terrorism
° Third—and perhaps most important—terrorists may
Like genocide, terrorism is directed primarily against civil-
at some stage acquire and use weapons of mass de-
ians. But although the focus of enormous attention, inter-
struction (WMD). This prospect is of particular concern
national terrorism has killed fewer than 1000 people a year,
because terrorists, unlike states, cannot be deterred by
on average, over the past 30 years.
threats of nuclear retaliation.
The trends in international terrorism have been the
subject of considerable recent controversy. The US State Much of the attention paid to possible WMD attacks
Department has published data on international terrorist has focused on the threat posed to the US and other
incidents around the world for more than 20 years—a rare Western countries. But mass-casualty terror attacks also
exception to the general rule that governments do not col- pose a major threat to poor countries—even when they are
lect statistics on trends in political violence. not directly targeted.
The likely consequence of a successful high-casualty
WMD attack against the US, for example, would be a major
International terrorism is a develop- downturn in the global economy. According to the World
ment issue for the global South, as Bank, the September 11 attacks on the US in 2001 pushed
well as being a vital security issue millions of people in the developing world into poverty,
for both the North and South. and likely killed tens of thousands of under-five-year-
olds—a far greater toll than the total number of deaths di-
rectly caused by the attack.
The State Department’s data for 2003 (Figure 1.12) International terrorism is thus a development issue
showed a 60% decline in the number of international ter- for the global South, as well being a vital security issue for
rorist attacks since the early 1980s, and in 2004 the Bush both the North and the South.
administration cited this finding to support its claim that
the US was winning the ‘war on terror’. But these data Human rights abuse
were profoundly misleading—they conflated relatively The Political Terror Scale (PTS) database, which is main-
trivial incidents with ‘significant’ attacks. The former tained by researchers at the University of North Carolina,
have indeed decreased, but the latter have shot up more Asheville, records global and regional trend data on hu-
than eightfold since the early 1980s (Figure 1.13). man rights abuse in the developing world. It uses a

6 HUMAN SECURITY REPORT 2005

composite indicator that captures such core human citizens are more susceptible to disease and malnutrition
rights abuses as torture, extrajudicial executions, the to begin with, their health systems are fragile and under-
‘disappearance’ of dissidents and officially backed death funded, and the humanitarian assistance they receive is
squads. Drawing on information compiled by Amnesty
14
often too little and too late.
International and the US State Department, it ranks each Indirect deaths receive little attention in the media
country on a five-point scale every year. because it is almost impossible to distinguish them from
Some 20 years of these data are shown in Figures 2.6 ‘normal’ deaths caused by malnutrition and disease. Few
and 2.7. Half the regions of the developing world saw outsiders notice a statistical increase in already high
the level of state repression increase somewhat between mortality rates—even though the number of additional
1980 and 1994, while five out of the six regions discussed deaths is likely to be many times greater than the number
showed a modest decrease from 1994 to 2003. Under- of battle-deaths. In some cases the ratio of ‘indirect’ to
reporting and different coding standards in the 1980s likely ‘direct’ deaths exceeds 10:1.
mean that the reduction in core human rights violations is Yet only when the death rate from malnutrition
greater than the trend data suggest. and disease escalates suddenly—as has recently hap-
pened in Sudan’s Darfur region—do indirect deaths en-
gage the attention of the media and generate pressure
There has been a dramatic world- for action.
wide decline in authoritarianism The indirect costs of warfare will be a central theme
over the past quarter century. of the Human Security Report 2006. Ignorance of the scope
and impact of these costs hampers effective planning for
humanitarian assistance and post-conflict reconstruction
The most insidious forms of repression occur where the programs. Donor governments, international agencies and
coercive power of the state is so pervasive that actual physi- NGOs often complain about the lack of information, but
cal repression rarely has to be used. What might be called few do much to address the problem.
‘rule by fear’ is most prevalent in highly authoritarian states. Then, there is the issue of accountability. Neither gov-
However, there is room for optimism here too, since ernments nor rebels are normally held legally or morally
there has been a substantial worldwide decline in authori- responsible for the indirect deaths caused by their actions,
tarianism over the past quarter century (Figure 5.3). in part because the linkage between war, disease and mal-
nutrition is not well understood.
Indirect deaths A government or rebel group that slaughters hun-
Many of the costs of war are obvious—battle-deaths, dis- dreds of civilians in wartime can, in principle, be brought
placed people, flattened cities, destroyed infrastructure, to justice before the International Criminal Court. But if
capital flight and slashed living standards. Less obvious are the same government or rebel group acts in a knowingly
the high numbers of ‘indirect’ or ‘excess’ deaths—non-vio- reckless and negligent manner, and in so doing causes tens
lent deaths that would not have occurred had there been or even hundreds of thousands to perish from disease and
no fighting. In most of today’s armed conflicts, war-exac- hunger, it is unlikely ever to be charged with a crime, let
erbated disease and malnutrition kill far more people than alone be successfully prosecuted.
missiles, bombs and bullets.
It is no surprise that poor countries suffer most from Violent crime
these indirect deaths. As Part IV of this report demon- While violent crime is clearly a threat to human security,
strates, these countries experience the most wars, their attempts to track global and regional trends in criminal

HUMAN SECURITY REPORT 2005 7

violence are hampered by lack of data, under-reporting politics of the Cold War were the major determinants of
and under-recording, conflicting definitions and, in some this increase (Figure 5.2).
cases, the reporting of war deaths as homicides. By the early 1980s the wars of liberation from colonial
Part II includes a review of the available data on global rule, which had accounted for 60% to 100% of all inter-
trends in homicide (Figure 2.9) and rape (Figure 2.10). But national wars fought since the early 1950s, had virtually
the discussion is in part an exercise in demonstrating how ended. With the demise of colonialism, a major driver of
little we know. The rape data are particularly problematic. warfare around the world—one that had caused 81 wars
It is impossible, for example, to determine whether the in- since 1816—simply ceased to exist.
crease in rape rates in many regions is a function of in- Then, in the late 1980s, the Cold War, which had
creased rape, increased reporting, or both. driven approximately one-third of all wars (civil as
well as international) in the post–World War II period,
also came to an end. This not only removed the only
Between 1946 and 1991 there was a risk of violent conflict between the major powers and
twelvefold rise in the number of civil their allies, it also meant that Washington and Moscow
wars—the greatest jump in 200 years. stopped supporting their erstwhile allies in many so-
called proxy wars in the developing world. Denied
external support, many of these conflicts quietly ground
The extent of rape in war is examined in Part III, but to a halt.
here, too, the discussion is hampered by the absence of With the colonial era and then the Cold War over,
reliable cross-national data. However, a major recent global warfare began to decline rapidly in the early
case study in Sierra Leone found a clear association be- 1990s. Between 1992 and 2002 the number of civil wars
tween displacement and being a victim of sexual violence. being fought each year plummeted by 80%. The decline
Displaced women were twice as likely to be raped as those in all armed conflicts—that is, wars plus minor armed
who remained in their homes. conflicts—was 40%.
Case study evidence indicates that this association may The end of the Cold War not only removed a major
exist in other conflict zones as well. If so, then it is reason- source of conflict from the international system, it also
able to assume that the fourfold increase in displacement allowed the UN to begin to play the security-enhancing
between the early 1970s and the early 1990s (Figure 3.1) role that its founders had intended, but which the organi-
was associated with a major increase in the incidence of sation had long been prevented from pursuing.
sexual violence.

The causes of peace With the colonial era and then the
Over the past three decades two epochal changes in inter- Cold War over, the number of armed
national politics have had a huge but little analysed im- conflicts began to decline rapidly in
pact on global security. These changes help explain both the early 1990s.
the increase in armed conflict around the world from the
end of World War II to the early 1990s and its subsequent
sharp decline. With the Security Council no longer paralysed by Cold
Between 1946 and 1991 there was a twelvefold rise in War politics, the UN spearheaded a veritable explosion of
the number of civil wars—the greatest jump in 200 years. 15
conflict prevention, peacemaking and post-conflict peace-
The data suggest that anti-colonialism and the geo- building activities in the early 1990s. Part V of this report

8 HUMAN SECURITY REPORT 2005

describes the extent of this unprecedented surge in activ- of course, and Part V reviews other possible explanations
ism, which included: for the dramatic decline in political violence in the post–
Cold War era.
° A sixfold increase in the number of preventive di- Over the long term the evidence suggests that
plomacy missions (those that seek to stop wars from
the risk of civil war is reduced by equitable economic
starting) mounted by the UN between 1990 and 2002.
growth, increased state capacity and inclusive democracy.
° A fourfold increase in peacemaking activites (those that Development is a necessary condition for security––and
seek to stop ongoing conflicts) over the same period
vice versa.
(Figure 5.5).
But Part V demonstrates that none of these factors can
° A sevenfold increase in the number of ‘Friends of account for the sharp decline in political violence around
the Secretary-General’, ‘Contact Groups’ and other
the world that started in the early 1990s and has continued
government-initiated mechanisms to support peace-
ever since. It argues that the single most compelling expla-
making and peacebuilding missions between 1990
nation for this decline is the upsurge of international activ-
and 2003.
ism described briefly above and in more detail in Part V.
° An elevenfold increase in the number of economic
sanctions in place against regimes around the world
between 1989 and 2001.
As the upsurge of international
° A fourfold increase in the number of UN peacekeep-
activism grew through the 1990s,
ing operations between 1987 and 1999 (Figure 5.6).
the number of crises, wars and
The increase in numbers was not the only change.
genocides declined.
The new missions were, on average, far larger and
more complex than those of the Cold War era and
they have been relatively successful in sustain-
The Human Security Report 2006 will include a more
ing the peace. With 40% of post-conflict coun-
detailed examination of the debates that continue to divide
tries relapsing into war again within five years,
the importance of preventing wars from restarting the scholarly community about the causes of peace.

is obvious.
No grounds for complacency
The UN did not act alone, of course; the World Bank, The dramatic improvements in global security documented
donor states, a number of regional organisations and thou- in this first Human Security Report are real and important.
sands of NGOs worked closely with UN agencies and of- But they are no cause for complacency. Some 60 wars are
ten played independent conflict prevention, conflict miti- still being fought around the world and the post–Cold
gation and peacebuilding roles of their own. Prior to the War years have also been marked by major humanitarian
end of the Cold War there had been little sustained activity emergencies, gross abuses of human rights, war crimes,
in any of these areas. and ever-deadlier acts of terrorism. But the conflicts that
Not one of the peacebuilding and conflict prevention remain—in Iraq, Darfur and elsewhere—continue to exact
programs on its own had much of an impact on global se- a deadly toll.
curity in this period. Taken together, however, their effect Moreover, the fact that wars come to an end does
has been profound. not necessarily mean that their underlying causes have
As the upsurge of international activism grew in scope been addressed. Indeed, a recent UK government report
and intensity through the 1990s, the number of crises, wars argues that much of the decrease in armed conflict is due,
and genocides declined. Correlation does not prove cause, in fact, to its ‘suppression or containment, rather than

HUMAN SECURITY REPORT 2005 9

resolution’.16 In addition to creating a legacy of bitter hos- in conflict numbers was not inevitable—and it is certainly
tility that hampers reconciliation, armed conflicts invari- not irreversible.
ably exacerbate the structural conditions that led to their But while there is no room for complacency, nor is there
outbreak in the first place. This is why the greatest single any cause for pessimism. The international community’s
risk factor for armed conflict is a recent history of politi- successes in reducing armed conflict worldwide in the
cal violence. post–Cold War era have been achieved despite inadequate
Some current developments suggest that the progress resources, ad hoc planning, inappropriate mandates (in
of the past dozen years now may be at risk. In May 2005 the case of UN peace operations) and lack of support from
the International Crisis Group reported that ten conflict the countries most able to help. With additional resources,
situations around the world had deteriorated in the pre- more appropriate mandates, and a greater commitment
vious month; only five had improved. In June 2005 the
17
to conflict prevention and peacebuilding, far more could
influential Peace and Conflict 2005 report noted that ‘risks be achieved.
of future genocides and political mass murder remain high Effective policy doesn’t just need extra resources and
in a half-dozen countries and a significant possibility in a greater political commitment. It also requires a better un-
dozen others.’ 18
derstanding of global and regional security trends—and
The risk of new wars breaking out—or old ones re- of why some conflict prevention and mitigation strategies
suming—is very real in the absence of a sustained and succeed while others fail.
strengthened commitment to conflict prevention and Providing the data and analysis to further such an un-
post-conflict peacebuilding. The post–Cold War decline derstanding is the central goal of the Human Security Report.

10 HUMAN SECURITY REPORT 2005

 overview

ENDNOTES

1. References for all statistics in the Overview are found in the main body of the Report unless otherwise noted.
2. The data cited here refer to conflicts in which a state is one of the warring parties. Until 2002 no data were collected for
armed conflicts in which a state was not a party.
3. This finding—from Monty G. Marshall and Ted Robert Gurr, Peace and Conflict 2005, Center for International Development
and Conflict Management (College Park, MD: University of Maryland, May 2005)—is not discussed in the Human Security
Report 2005 because Peace and Conflict 2005 was published after the relevant section of this report was written.
4. There was no comparably sustained decrease in the number of internally displaced persons—that is, those who had fled
their homes but had not crossed into another country and become refugees.
5. John Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York: Basic Books, 1989).
6. Heidelberg Institute on International Conflict Research, Conflict Barometer 2004 (Heidelberg: Insitute on International
Conflict Research, University of Heidelberg, 2005), www.hiik.de/en/ConflictBarometer_2004.pdf (accessed 31 May 2005).
These findings will be discussed in detail in the Human Security Report 2006.
7. Note that this claim refers to people killed in fighting, not those who die of war-induced disease and/or malnutrition.
8. See John J. Mearsheimer, ‘Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War’, August 1990, http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/
index.asp?document=713 (accessed 31 May 2005).
9. The discussion on Africa draws on a paper prepared for this report by Monty G. Marshall and Ted Robert Gurr and on their
Peace and Conflict 2005.
10. While the UN was collecting refugee data during this period, little effort was made to collect data on internally displaced
persons (IDPs). The IDP data, which are now collected by independent organisations such as the Global IDP Project, almost
certainly underestimate the true number of people displaced within their own borders between the 1960s and the begin-
ning of the 1980s.
11. UN High Commissioner for Refugees, The State of the World’s Refugees: Fifty Years of Humanitarian Action (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000).
12. This is not always the case, of course. More people were killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994 than on all the world’s
battlefields in 1950, the year with the highest battle-death toll in the post–World War II era.
13. Pew Research Center, ‘A Year After Iraq: Mistrust of America in Europe Ever Higher, Muslim Anger Persists’, Survey Reports,
Pew Research Center website, http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=796 (accessed 15 August 2005).
14. The central focus of the Political Terror Scale is state repression; however, the identity of the perpetrators of human rights
abuses is not always clear, so some of the violence that is recorded may be perpetrated by non-state groups.
15. Note that civil wars are defined here as conflicts that have incurred at least 1000 battle-deaths. Only armed conflicts in
which a government was one of the warring parties are discussed.
16. Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, ‘Investing in Prevention: an International Strategy to Manage Risks of Instability and
Improve Crisis Response’, The Challenges of Instability: Overview of Instability, http://www.strategy.gov.uk/downloads/
work_areas/countries_at_risk/report/chapter1.htm (accessed 30 August 2005).
17. International Crisis Group, ‘Crisis Watch’, no. 21, 1 May 2005, International Crisis Group website, www.crisisgroup.org/
home/index.cfm?l=1&id=3399 (accessed 31 May 2005).
18. Monty G. Marshall and Ted Robert Gurr, Peace and Conflict 2005.

HUMAN SECURITY REPORT 2005 11