U.N Study Shows Armed Conflicts Down 40% Since 1992 | |||||
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[numerous reports on this are now going all over the world] "We knew the number of wars was coming down, because that has been around in academic circles for a while, but particularly surprising is how the decline in wars is reflected right across the board in all forms of political conflict and violence" ABC News October 17, 2005 --START COPY-- U.N.: Conflicts Down 40 Pct. Since 1992 U.N. Study Shows Armed Conflicts Down 40 Percent Since 1992; Genocide, Human Rights Abuses Down By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press Writer UNITED NATIONS - A study issued Monday paints a surprising picture of war and peace in the 21st century: Armed conflicts have declined by more than 40 percent since 1992, and genocide and human rights abuses have plummeted around the world. The only form of political violence that appears to be getting worse is international terrorism a serious threat that nonetheless kills extraordinarily few people per year compared to wars, it said. The first Human Security Report, financed by five governments, said the end of the Cold War and breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989-91 was the most important factor in the decline in armed conflicts: It ended the East-West ideological battle, stopped the flow of money to proxy wars in the developing world, and most importantly allowed the United Nations for the first time to begin to play the role its founders intended. "Over the past dozen years, the global security climate has changed in dramatic, positive, but largely unheralded ways," the report said. "Civil wars, genocides and international crises have all declined sharply." Professor Andrew Mack, who directed the three-year study, said there has been a shift away from the huge wars of the 1950s, '60s and '70s where million-strong armies faced each other with conventional weapons. "The average war today tends to be very small, low intensity conflict, fought with ill-trained troops, small arms and light weapons, often very brutal, with lots of civilians killed but the absolute numbers of people being killed are ... much, much smaller than they were before," he said. Armed conflicts have not only declined by more than 40 percent since 1992, but the deadliest conflicts with over 1,000 battle deaths dropped even more dramatically by 80 percent. The number of international crises, often harbingers of war, fell by more than 70 percent between 1981 and 2001, the report said. Notwithstanding the genocides in Rwanda in 1994 and Srebrenica in 1995, mass killings because of religion, ethnicity or political beliefs plummeted by 80 percent between the 1988 high point and 2001, it said. The report also traced other positive changes back to the post-World War II era. "The average number of battle-deaths per conflict per year the best measure of the deadliness of warfare has been falling dramatically but unevenly since the 1950s," it said. In 1950, the worst year, the average war killed 37,000 people directly, Mack said. "By 2002, it was 600 an extraordinary change." The postwar period also saw the longest period of peace between the major powers in hundreds of years, and attempted military coups have been in decline for 40 years, the study found. Mack, who directs the Human Security Center at the University of British Colombia in Vancouver, said the report relies on major new data from the Conflict Data Program at Sweden's Uppsala University and other sources. He said its statistics were probably the best available, but emphasized that decent data on wars and conflicts remained hard to obtain. "We would never be confident about a single figure," he said. "What we can be confident about is trends." In looking at the reasons for the decline of conflicts, Mack noted that most of the wars over colonialism ended by the early 1980s and the end of the Cold War ended the tensions between capitalism and communism. But he said the single, most important factor was the liberation of the United Nations. "With the Security Council no longer paralyzed by Cold War politics, the U.N. spearheaded a veritable explosion of conflict prevention, peacemaking and post-conflict peace-building activities in the early 1990s," the report said. Mack, who was the director of strategic planning in Secretary-General Kofi Annan's office from 1998-2001, told a briefing that even though there were "some awful mistakes" and many of those U.N. efforts were "disasters," there were also some quiet successes. A Rand Corp. study earlier this year concluded that the United Nations was successful in 66 percent of its peace efforts, but even the 40 percent success rate some believe is more accurate would be an achievement considering that prior to the 1990s "there was nothing going on at all," he said. "We think the United Nations, despite the many failures, has done in many ways an extraordinary job ... very often with inadequate resources, inappropriate mandates, and with horrible politics in the council," Mack said. "If the politics were less horrible, the resources more adequate and the mandates more appropriate, then I think the U.N. could do a much better job." The report was funded by Canada, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and Britain. Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures --END COPY-- Voice of America October 18, 2005 from http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-10-18-voa2.cfm --START COPY-- Report: Political Violence Down Since End of Cold War By Peter Heinlein United Nations 18 October 2005 A new report shows a decline in almost all forms of political violence since the end of the Cold War. The only exception is international terrorism. The number and frequency of armed conflicts, genocides, human rights violations, military coups and international crises are all down. The 2005 Human Security Report shows that many commonly held beliefs about wars are wrong. The report's principal author, Canada-based political scientist Andrew Mack, listed a few at Monday news conference at U.N. headquarters For instance, he says figures show there are fewer wars involving nations and the number of genocides and other politically-motivated killings is dropping. Mr. Mack says his findings came as a big surprise to U.N. officials. "For many people in the U.N., the 1990s was the worst decade the organization experienced. This was the decade of Somalia, Srebrenica, of Rwanda and so forth, and yet the reality is, during this period, although there were these awful conflicts, the overall number of wars had gone down," Mr. Mack says. He says the number of people killed as a result of armed conflicts is at its lowest since the Korean War era. "People say to us, look, it may well be the case that there are fewer wars and fewer genocides, but surely more people are being killed," Mr. Mack says. "But when we look at this, the number of people killed in wars involving a state every year, all the wars, and you can see there's a high point, that's the Korean war, and it keeps on going down and down and down. If you look at the average number of people killed per conflict per year, it goes from 37-thousand in 1950 to just 600 in 2002." Mr. Mack says there are several reasons for the decline in number of wars and genocides. Among them are the increased U.N. role in conflict prevention, the end of the Cold War, and the end of colonialism. But the main cause is simply that the nature of war is changing. "We no longer have huge wars with huge armies, major engagements, heavy conventional weapons, most of today's wars are low-intensity wars fought with light weapons, small arms, often in very poor countries, they are extremely brutal but they don't kill that many people," Mr. Mack says. The report notes that international terrorism is on the rise. The U.S. National Counterterrorism Center shows a jump from 175 significant terrorist incidents in 2003 to 651 last year, most of them linked to Kashmir. But Mr. Mack says that while terrorism is on the rise, it is not as grave a security threat as it is often portrayed. "Among the myths we look at and explode are the idea that international terrorism is the greatest threat to global security. In face, international terrorism kills only a tiny number of people each year compared to the number killed in wars," Mr. Mack says. The Human Security Report concludes that while the world may be getting more peaceful, that is no consolation for people in places such as Darfur, Iraq, Congo, or Nepal. The study was sponsored by the governments of Canada, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Britain. It can be found online at www.humansecuritycenter.org --END COPY-- The Christian Science Monitor October 18, 2005 from http://csmonitor.com/2005/1018/p01s01-wogi.html --START COPY-- World > Global Issues [picture] FEWER WARS? President Bush talked to members of the 42nd Infantry Division (Mechanized) National Guard unit stationed in Tikrit, Iraq, via video teleconference Oct. 13. A new report suggests that the number of violent global conflicts is decreasing. LARRY DOWNING/REUTERS A welcome surprise: war waning globally By Howard LaFranchi Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor WASHINGTON - After a 20th century that was perhaps mankind's most violent, all indicators point to a 21st century that will be as bad or worse. Civil wars and new ideological conflicts will multiply. The effectiveness of international forces for peace will wane. And the security of mankind will be the victim caught in the middle. Right? Wrong, says a report based on a three-year study by a group of international researchers. Contrary to widespread public perception, they find that the world is witnessing fewer wars - and those wars that do occur are killing fewer people. The study, released Monday at the UN, also concludes that global conflict-prevention and postconflict peacebuilding efforts are becoming more numerous and more effective. "We knew the number of wars was coming down, because that has been around in academic circles for a while, but particularly surprising is how the decline in wars is reflected right across the board in all forms of political conflict and violence," says Andrew Mack, head of the Human Security Center at the University of British Columbia. He directed the team that delivered the report. That means that not only are interstate wars down, but so are civil conflicts, as well as other forms of political violence like human-rights abuses. The report finds that the total number of conflicts declined by 40 percent since the cold war ended. The average number of deaths per conflict has also declined dramatically, from 37,000 in 1950 to 600 in 2002. The study found 25 civil conflicts last year - the lowest number since 1976. Why the vast improvement? The report credits an "explosion of efforts" in conflict prevention and peacebuilding. The number of UN "preventive diplomacy" missions and government-based "contact groups" aimed at resolving conflicts has risen sharply in the last decade. Other specialists note that the number of democracies in the world is growing. And democracies, recent history suggests, do not go to war against each other. "Yes there are caveats, but generally the growing number of democracies in the world reduces the number of countries to fight," says Richard Stoll, a political scientist at Rice University in Houston. At the same time, he says that a strengthening sense of an "international community" is changing world thinking on when warfare is acceptable. War in Afghanistan, viewed by the world as a response to an attack, was seen as legitimate, says Mr. Stoll. Iraq, judged more as a war of choice, he adds, was not. The increasing weight of world opinion and action is also having an impact on leaders and warlords who in another era would have felt no constraints on warmaking, says John Norris, a senior adviser with the International Crisis Group in Washington. "There is an international rallying to the notion of a need to protect populations that are threatened in their own borders; it's gained some traction," say Mr. Norris. He notes that international actions against high-profile violators like Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic or Liberia's Charles Taylor have had an impact. "The world has sent a message to the warlords and despots," he says, "and we've seen modified behavior from people who were engaged in the worst sorts of abuses." Norris says failures in Rwanda, the Balkans, and Sierra Leone in the 1990s taught the international community what doesn't work. Peacekeeping operations are now "more robust, and we're generally better at postconflict activities." To be sure, the report does not suggest that wars are disappearing. "The last thing we want to encourage with this is complacency," says Mr. Mack. But the findings, he says, should help debunk fears that global human security is deteriorating. Why do those fears persist, despite countervailing evidence? Mack lays principal blame on the media, which he says dwell on conflict while paying less attention to "quiet successes" and under-the-surface trends. And he notes that people's perceptions are slow to change. In South Africa, for example, people continue to think that murder and other violence are getting worse, even thought statistics show that those threats are decreasing. The public's sense of what threatens security in the 21st century has changed, too, especially in developed countries like the United States, experts say. The 9/11 attacks "tore away the illusion that the oceans protected us," says Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, with the "psychological effect that certainly Americans feel less secure." ICG's Norris says a poor perception of security in the face of improving conditions may be a response to what he worries is a trend for the 21st century - more targeting of individuals, including aid workers. "Those cases get a lot of attention," he says, "and suggest another area for international action." Copyright © 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. --END COPY-- The Washington Post October 17, 2005 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/17/AR2005101701613.html --START COPY-- A Look at U.N. Study of Global Violence By The Associated Press Monday, October 17, 2005; 9:50 PM -- Key findings from a three-year study of global violence released Monday: _ The number of civil wars, which now make up more than 95 percent of all armed conflicts, rose sharply after World War II but have declined since 1992. _ Between 1992 and 2003, the last year for which complete data are currently available, the number of armed conflicts dropped by 40 percent. _ In 1992, there were 51 armed conflicts involving at least one government. The number fell to 32 in 2002 and to 29 in 2003. _ Asia had the most armed conflicts involving a government in 2003 with 14, followed by Africa with 10. _ Of the 29 armed conflicts in 2003, only two were between countries, India against Pakistan and the U.S.-led war against Iraq. _ Britain and France, the two countries that once had the largest colonial empires, have fought the most international wars since 1946 _ with 21 for Britain and 19 for France. The United States ranked third with 16 wars and Russia fourth with nine. Most of their wars were fought over Cold War issues. _ Mass killings as a result of religious, ethnic or political beliefs dropped from 10 in 1989 to two in 2001. _ In 1972, there were over 340,000 battle-deaths from armed conflicts involving at least one government. In 1982, there were over 250,000, in 1992 over 100,000, and in 2002, less than 20,000 _ the lowest total since 1927. _ In 2003, Africa had almost 11,000 battle-deaths, the Middle East had over 9,000, Asia had nearly 6,000, and Europe and the Americas less than 1,000. --END COPY-- -------------- Send email to: TMFriends@yahoogroups.com or press REPLY to this email. List Website: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TMFriends--------------
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