Organized violence 1989–2017

For the third year running, the annual update from UCDP presents trends in not only state-based armed conflict, but also non-state conflict and one-sided violence. The three categories are mutually exclusive and can be aggregated as ‘organized violence’. They also share the same intensity cut-off for inclusion – 25 fatalities in a calendar year. State-based armed conflict includes violence where at least one of the parties is the government of a state, that is, violence between two states and violence between the government and a rebel group. An example of the former is the border conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, while the conflict between the Taliban and the Afghan government is an example of the latter. Non-state conflict, on the other hand, is the use of armed force between two organized groups, such as rebel groups or ethnic groups, neither of which is the government of a state. Examples include fighting between the Islamic State (IS) and Tahrir al-Sham in Syria, as well as the interethnic fighting between the nomadic pastoralist Fulani and the mainly agriculturalist Mambila in Nigeria. Finally, one-sided violence covers violence by the government of a state or by a formally organized group targeting unarmed civilians. Recent examples include the CPI-Maoist targeting civilians they consider enemies of their struggle, and the government of Kenya killing protestors following elections.1

Figure 1 shows that the number of fatalities in organized violence decreased for the third consecutive year. In 2017, UCDP recorded almost 90,000 deaths, a decrease of 32% compared to the latest peak in 2014. State-based armed conflict drives this trend in declining levels of organized violence.

Non-state conflict 1989–2017 UCDP has recorded a total of 670 non-state conflicts since 1989, with a yearly average of 37 active conflicts. While the increase in non-state conflict since 2010 was reversed in 2016, it again rose substantially in 2017, reaching a new peak of 82 active conflicts. As in previous years, Syria and Mexico dominated this picture, together responsible for 28% of the total number of non-state conflicts. However, the number of active conflicts was also on the rise in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR). In CAR, a new pattern of intra-Muslim violence emerged, in addition to the widespread violence pitting Muslims against Christians. After a failed attempt to unite the mainly Muslim groups that used to be part of the ex-Séléka alliance, these actors intensified attacks on groups based among the mainly Muslim Fulani people, claiming that they were foreigners. This led to new alliances and enmities, resulting in an increasing number of non-state conflicts as well as higher levels of one-sided Download Open in new tab Download in PowerPoint violence. In DRC, President Joseph Kabila has stayed in power beyond the limit stated in the constitution, sparking a political crisis. Widespread protests met by violence have, in turn, encouraged the plethora of armed groups in the country to mobilize and violently defend their interests. Africa saw a large increase in the number of non-state conflicts in 2017 compared to 2016, from 35 to 50. In the Middle East, 19 non-state conflicts were recorded in 2017, up by two from 2016. As was the case in 2016, the vast majority of the conflicts in the Middle East took place in Syria. The Americas had 11 active non-state conflicts in 2017, an increase from 8 in 2016. For the past five years, non-state conflicts in the Americas have been concentrated in Mexico. In 2017, however, three new conflicts between criminal gangs were recorded in Brazil. At the end of 2016, the longstanding alliance between two of the country’s biggest criminal organizations, Comando Vermelho and Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), broke down. As a result, fighting between these two groups and their allies escalated in 2017. Finally, just as in 2016, two non-state conflicts were recorded in Asia in 2017, both of them in Afghanistan. The sharp increase in the number of non-state conflicts was accompanied by a rise in the number of fatalities from this type of violence. Figure 4 shows a new peak in fatalities in 2017, with more than 13,500 people killed in non-state conflict. Much of this is due to the conflict between IS and SDF in Syria, which was the most lethal non-state conflict during the year, just as in 2016. This conflict alone caused almost 5,000 deaths as the Kurdish-dominated SDF launched the ‘Great Battle’ to expel IS from its de facto capital Raqqa in June (Rudaw, 2017). After more than four months of intense fighting between the two non-state groups, amid heavy airstrikes carried out by the US-led coalition, SDF captured the city in October. Following the Raqqa offensive, SDF continued to push back IS from its former strongholds in large parts of Deir Ezzor province. As a consequence, the Middle East was the region where most fatalities in non-state conflicts were incurred. However, the overall increase in deaths was also caused by escalating violence in Africa. UCDP recorded an almost 50% increase in the number of deaths in the region in 2017, mainly due to the fighting in CAR discussed above. While fatalities in non-state conflict peaked in 2017, they remain but 15% of the total number of fatalities in organized violence. As Figure 1 shows, the number of people killed in state-based violence dwarfs that of non-state conflict, suggesting that it would be inadvisable to infer a substitution effect between the two forms of violence. While some non-state conflicts can be seen as de facto proxy wars between rival states, most non-state conflicts are connected to weak state apparatuses and the lack of territorial control by the government (Fjelde & Nilsson, 2012). The four countries in which the majority of non-state conflicts took place in 2017 – Syria, Mexico, Nigeria, and CAR – are examples of such weak states.