Organized violence, 1989–2015

Abstract

The alarming upward trend since 2012 in the number of fatalities incurred by organized violence did not continue in 2015. Indeed, 2014 saw more than 130,000 people killed in organized violence while in 2015 this figure was close to 118,000. This is still an unusually high number, the third-worst year in the post-Cold War period. The number of conflicts continued to increase from 41 in 2014 to 50 in 2015. This increase was by and large driven by the expansion of the Islamic State. Most of the fatalities, over 97,000, incurred in state-based conflicts. Non-state conflicts also increased, from 61 in 2014 to 70 in 2015, the highest number recorded in the 1989–2015 period. No non-state conflict passed the threshold of 1,000 battle-related deaths, but 11 state-based conflicts did – a decrease by one from 2014. Seven of the ten most violent state-based conflicts in 2014 became less violent. Twenty-six actors were registered in one-sided violence just as in 2014, while the number of fatalities decreased from over 13,500 to 9,500.