The string of multicoloured beads in the gallery to the right tells the history of war, starting in 1946. Each bead represents a year -- the larger the bead, the more recorded battle deaths.
The focus on conflicts between states means many violent deaths are excluded - the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, for example - but even so, the overall trend is clear. "The number of people killed in conflict has been declining significantly," says Henrik Urdal, 43, research professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), which worked with the Uppsala Conflict Data Project to collate the data. "If you take into account the growth in the world population, the relative risk of dying in war has been going down even more."
To collect the data, PRIO uses a combination of surveys, media reports and historical sources. It is by no means an exact science, even in recent conflicts: initial estimates of casualties in Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example, ranged from 60,000 to 360,000 (the International Criminal Tribunal now says there were around 100,000 military and civilian deaths). "The uncertainties are huge," says Urdal.
Equally uncertain is the reason for the decline. "The main reason for the drop is that some of the regions that have seen the largest battles, particularly East Asia, but also Latin America, are largely free of conflict," says Urdal.
But why does peace settle in some parts of the world and not others? "I'm hesitant to identify a single cause," says Urdal, "but if you look at the age structure in these areas they have become more mature." Youth makes a country combustible, as the Arab world demonstrates. "What you see there is being helped by the demographic situation," says Urdal.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
