Global Conflicts Reach Highest Level Since World War II: Report
AFP
Oslo: The world experienced the highest number of state-based conflicts since the end of the Second World War in 2025, according to a new report released by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), which also highlighted a sharp rise in attacks against civilians.
The annual ‘Conflict Trends’ report recorded 65 conflicts involving at least one state last year, the highest number since 1946. Interstate conflicts also reached an 80-year peak, doubling from four in 2024 to eight in 2025.
Among the interstate confrontations cited in the report were border clashes between India and Pakistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Cambodia and Thailand, alongside Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and Israeli military operations in Syria.
“Unfortunately, there is not a lot of positive news this year,” PRIO researcher Siri Aas Rustad said, describing the figures as “shocking.”
The report found that approximately 245,000 people were killed in fighting or political violence during 2025, making it the third-deadliest year since the end of the Cold War.
Of those deaths, around 76,500 resulted from attacks directly targeting civilians, a dramatic increase from 14,200 civilian deaths recorded in 2024.
Much of the rise in civilian casualties was linked to the conflict in Sudan, where fighting between the military and paramilitary forces, particularly in the besieged Darfur city of El-Fasher, is estimated to have claimed about 60,000 lives.
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According to PRIO, only two years since the Cold War have witnessed higher death tolls: 1994, during the Rwanda genocide, and 2021, amid the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.
The report noted that multiple large-scale conflicts have unfolded simultaneously in recent years, creating a sustained period of global instability.
“What has happened in the past five or six years is that we have several major conflicts taking place at the same time, and they seem to replace one another without any pause,” Rustad said.
The study, based on data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) at Uppsala University, categorises organised violence into state-based conflicts, non-state conflicts, and one-sided violence against civilians.
Africa remained the region most affected by state-based conflicts, accounting for 29 of the 65 recorded conflicts, followed by Asia, the Middle East, the Americas, and Europe.
Rustad also highlighted Israel’s involvement in multiple conflicts across Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and against Houthi forces, while warning that growing geopolitical divisions and weakening international cooperation were contributing to global instability.
She argued that increasing political polarisation and trade tensions, alongside the limited effectiveness of international institutions such as the UN Security Council, were creating a more fragmented and conflict-prone world.
