"The numbers are shocking" : World is settling into a new era of high violence, study finds

The year 2025 saw the greatest number of state conflicts since the end of the Second World War and an explosion of attacks targeting civilians, notes a study published Tuesday June 9. “Unfortunately, there’s not much positive that I can extract from all of this”declared Siri Aas Rustad, researcher at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (Norway), presenting the annual “Conflict Trends” report. “Usually I always manage to find something positive, but this year the numbers are shocking”she added.

In 2025, 65 conflicts involving at least one state were recorded in the world, a new historic high since 1946. The number of interstate conflicts also doubled in one year to eight, again a record in eighty years. Among them were reignited border tensions between India and Pakistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as Cambodia and Thailand, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Israeli military operation in Syria, around the occupied Golan Heights, after the fall of the Assad regime, as well as several conflicts linked to regional tensions in the Middle East.

The year 2025 was the third deadliest since the end of the Cold War, with around 245,000 deaths directly linked to fighting or political violence, including nearly 76,500 attributed to attacks directly targeting civilians, against 14,200 in 2024. The sharp increase in this last figure is due to the conflict between the army and the paramilitaries in Sudan, where it is estimated that the siege and massacres perpetrated in El-Facher (Darfur) alone left some 60,000 dead. Since the end of the Cold War, only 2021 and 1994 have seen more bloodshed due to, respectively, the war in Tigray and the genocide in Rwanda.

The study is based on figures compiled by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), attached to Uppsala University (Sweden). Israel “is clearly one of the most aggressive countries in the world at the moment”explains Siri Aas Rustad, noting his involvement in conflicts of different types in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, against Iran and against the Houthi rebels. “There are clearly more tensions in the world. It’s safe to say that the United States has a lot to do with it. They’re not just attacking and increasing violence, there are also the trade barriers they’re putting in place.” since Donald Trump’s return to power, the researcher also said.