18th October, 2005

More wars are now ending than are beginning around the world with the total number of armed conflicts dropping by more than 40 per cent since the early 1990s, according to a new report from the Vancouver-based Human Security Centre.

The report - War and Peace in the 21st Century - also found that the deadliness of conflicts has dropped dramatically, from 38,000 per conflict in 1950 to 600 in 2002.

Elsewhere, it found the United Kingdom tops those countries that have experienced most international armed conflicts between 1946 and 2003 with 21 followed by France (19), the United States (16), Russia and the USSR (9) and Australia (7).

The report was compiled by a team lead by Professor Andrew Mack and was funded by the governments of Canada, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Among its finding was that while in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies East and Southeast Asia had the highest battle death-tolls and that in the Seventies and Eighties most of the killing took place in the Middle East, Central and South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, by the end of the Nineties, more people were being killed in wars in sub-Saharan Africa than in the rest of the world put together.

But the report found that even in Africa there are encouraging signs with the total numbers of armed conflicts dropping from 41 to 35 between 2002 and 2003.

- DAVID ADAMS