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Trends and Causes of Armed Conflict

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Transforming Ethnopolitical Conflict

Abstract

From the start of 1990 to the end of 1999 there were 118 armed conflicts world wide, involving 80 states and two para-state regions and resulting in the death of approximately six million people. If we seek to prevent conflict from escalating into armed warfare, or, failing that, to at least achieve an end to fighting as soon as possible, and if we want to maximise the opportunity for avoiding the return of the war after apparent settlement, we must first be sure that we properly understand armed conflicts and their causes.

Data on armed conflicts in this chapter update the information, and use the same definition and data rules, as in the atlas, The State of War and Peace (Smith 1997). Compared to the data produced at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, and published annually in Journal of Peace Research (see Wallensteen and Sollenberg 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000) these data are similar in broad outline but significantly different in detail. Both data-sets use 25 war-deaths per year as a threshold for inclusion, but I place the annual total in a context of a total of several hundred war-deaths, rejecting a more precise total figure as too demanding for the available data. I do not follow the Uppsala team in including as part of the definition the involvement of a recognised state on at least one side.

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Authors
  1. Dan Smith
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Alex Austin Martina Fischer Norbert Ropers

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© 2004 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden

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Smith, D. (2004). Trends and Causes of Armed Conflict. In: Austin, A., Fischer, M., Ropers, N. (eds) Transforming Ethnopolitical Conflict. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-663-05642-3_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-663-05642-3_6

  • Publisher Name: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-8100-3940-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-663-05642-3

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