Intrastate Conflict by the Numbers

4 Feb 2013

We begin today’s Special Feature with infographics that chart some of the key trends associated with intrastate conflicts and civil wars over the past six decades.

Our first graph depicts the steady decline of inter-state warfare since the end of World War II and a parallel upsurge in intrastate conflicts that involve the government. The latter trend has been particularly pronounced since the end of the Cold War, despite a brief decline in the mid-1990s.

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Data Source: UCDP/PRIO, courtesy of external pageHuman Security Report

While the first graph provides data only on state-based conflicts, where one of the warring parties is indeed the state and its armed forces, the following one shows that the number of intrastate conflicts between 1989 and 2009 – if you account for those conflicts where the warring parties operated beyond the control of the state – was actually much higher.

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Data Source: UCDP/HSRP Dataset, courtesy of external pageHuman Security Report

In our final map, we chart the outbreak of intrastate violence from 1989 to 2010 in a part of the world that has become synonymous with civil wars and intrastate conflict – i.e., Sub-Saharan Africa. (Note: The red points on the map represent conflicts with over 1,000 deaths.)

Incidents of violence in Africa 1989-2010

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See external pagelarge map. Data source: external pageUCDP