The world will experience the highest number of state conflicts since World War II in 2025, a Norwegian study said Tuesday, warning of an increase in attacks on civilians.
The Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO)’s annual “Conflict Trends” report said 65 conflicts involving at least one state were recorded worldwide last year, a new record since 1946.
Conflicts between states also reached a new 80-year high, doubling from the previous year to eight, including border clashes between India and Pakistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Cambodia and Thailand, as well as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Israeli military operations against Syria.
“Unfortunately there are not many positive things,” researcher Siri Aas Rustad told a group of media outlets, including AFP.
“Normally I can get something positive out of it, but this year the numbers are shocking.”
Last year was the third deadliest since the end of the Cold War, with around 245,000 deaths directly related to combat or political violence, almost 76,500 of them attributed to attacks directly targeting civilians, compared to 14,200 in 2024.
The sharp increase in civilian deaths is due to the conflict between the army and paramilitaries in Sudan, where the siege and massacres carried out in the city of El-Fasher, in the Darfur region, are estimated to have left some 60,000 people dead.
Since the end of the Cold War, only 1994 and 2021 have seen more bloodshed, due to the Rwandan genocide and the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, respectively.
Africa is the most affected
“What has happened in the last five or six years is that we have several major conflicts at the same time, and they seem to take over each other. The world has no respite,” Rustad said.
“And that’s different than what we had before: this continued level of high-intensity conflict globally.”
The PRIO study is based on figures collected by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), attached to Uppsala University.
It distinguishes between three main types of organized violence: conflicts involving at least one state, non-state conflicts, and unilateral violence against civilians.
Africa continued to be the region most affected by the first type of conflict, with 29, followed by Asia, the Middle East, America and Europe.
Rustad said Israel was “clearly one of the most aggressive countries in the world right now,” pointing to its involvement in different types of conflicts in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, against Iran and against the Houthi rebels.
He also referred to the United States, saying that President Donald Trump’s return to power had brought “not only attacks and an increase in violence, but also the trade barriers that they are putting up.”
“We are putting a brake on collaboration. The (UN) Security Council is not functioning at the moment. We have a much more polarized world,” he said.
