The 2011 uprisings in the Arab world came as a surprise to most observers. While successive Arab Human Development Reports had identified lingering problems affecting the Arab regimes—including inequality, lack of economic development, low levels of participation in policy formation and the marginalization of women—few experts expected either the series of mass revolts that were carried out with such persistence and with such a global impact or the increasing use of violence to suppress them.
Insatserna för global fred måste stärkas skriver tolv företrädare för institutionen för freds- och konfliktforskning apropå att världens ledare samlas i dag i New York för att anta 17 nya globala mål för en bättre värld och mer hållbar utveckling.
The focus of this article is civil war peace agreement duration from 1989 to 2005. Recent work by Hartzell and Hoddie (2003, 2007) has argued that power-sharing provisions have a cumulative impact. In other words, the more power-sharing provisions there are built into an agreement, the greater the prospects for peace. Our basic theoretical premise is that power-sharing provisions that are costlier to government and more difficult to implement will decrease the life span of the peace agreement because of government motivations to renegotiate and rebel incentive to strike preemptively before the government does or out of frustration because of delays in implementing costly provisions. In other words, governments will abandon the agreement because it concedes too much or rebels will abandon the agreement because of delays in implementation and/or to move preemptively. We look at three forms of power-sharing provisions: military (integration of rebels into army), territorial (autonomy), and political (shared government). Civil war peace agreements can expire after being replaced by a new agreement or if at least one party abandons the agreement. Hazard models are specified controlling for democracy score at time of signing, intensity of war, GDP per capita, and type of agreement.The results indicate that the less costly concessions by government of military integration and autonomy increase the duration of peace agreements, while political power-sharing provisions have a negative though insignificant impact on duration.
The four essays in this forum consider the influence of J. David Singer's initial views and analyses dating from the 1960s and 1970s on topics that continue to hold great importance today. Three essays consider the implications of these early works and decisions on the subsequent study of war, as well as their continuing wisdom (or not) in light of subsequent research. The fourth essay examines Singer's policy prescriptions in light of subsequent decisions and choices. In some cases, the ideas continue to have resonance with contemporary conflict research and policy issues, but in other instances there are grounds for reevaluation and the adoption of new research and data collection strategies or policy perspectives.
Capitalizing on the newly released dataset on United Nations sanctions and armed conflicts, this article raises the question whether targeted sanctions have an impact on the dynamics of armed conflicts, and, if they do, in what way. To answer this question the authors correlate UN sanctions policies to measures related to armed conflict in the period 1991-2013. This is done by systematizing and analysing data produced by the UN Targeted Sanctions Consortium (TSC) and the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP). It is a first attempt to deal with questions such as the relationship between UN targeted sanctions and armed conflict type, conflict termination and conflict outcome (victory, peace agreements, etc.). The article demonstrates that there are several instances where the UN has decided not to impose targeted sanctions, although the conditions were similar to those cases that saw such action. There is a tendency to use targeted sanctions only in certain types of conflicts. The authors suggest that this is partly rooted in the structure of the UN as an inter-state organization. Thus, sanctions are more of a political instrument than has perhaps been recognized in sanctions research to date.
In 2014, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) recorded 40 armed conflicts with a minimum of 25 battle-related deaths, up by six from 2013. This is the highest number of conflicts reported since 1999, and 11 of these conflicts were defined as wars, that is, conflicts generating 1,000 or more battle-related deaths in one calendar year. Further, an escalation of several conflicts, coupled with the extreme violence in Syria, resulted in the highest number of battle-related deaths in the post-1989 period. Yet, compared to the large-scale interstate wars of the 20th century, the number of fatalities caused by armed conflicts in 2014 was relatively low. Additionally, seven conflicts identified in 2013 were no longer active in 2014. However, four new conflicts erupted in 2014, all of them in Ukraine, and three previously registered conflicts were restarted by new actors. Furthermore, six conflicts reoccurred with previously registered actors. A positive development, however, is the increase to ten of the number of peace agreements concluded and signed in 2014, which represents a further four compared with 2013. And although this increase is part of a positive trend since 2011, it is worth noting that several peace processes remained fragile by the end of the year.
Countries at civil war differ across a number of dimensions that are often used to account for onset, duration or severity. A relatively understudied dimension is the role of institutional arrangements on the severity of civil wars. We argue that federal systems put in place the mechanisms to make civil wars shorter but bloodier because they often allow for independent militia, taxation, and infrastructural development. Federal systems also make more credible a declaration of independence. These factors make civil wars looks much more like conventional warfare than their guerilla-based counterpart. We rely on the cases of Yugoslavia and the United States to build and describe our arguments and then we test our arguments against cross national data from the 20th century civil wars. Our results provide insights into the role of institutional arrangements on the management of internal conflicts and suggest that further research could make an important contribution to our understanding of civil wars.
In 2010, UCDP recorded 30 active armed conflicts (i.e. with a minimum of 25 battle-related deaths). This is a substantial reduction in relation to the 36 conflicts registered for 2009. A drop of this magnitude has only been reported four times previously in the post-1946 period. However, only in two of these instances was this part of a general downward trend. Thus no major inferences should be drawn, except perhaps that the reduction in conflicts in Africa seems to be part of a trend. At 30 in 2010, the number of active conflicts is at its lowest level since 2003. Furthermore, the number of wars (1,000 or more battle-related deaths) declined from six in 2009 to four in 2010. The most intense war in terms of fatalities was in Afghanistan. Eight of the armed conflicts listed for 2009 were not active in 2010, but during the year two new conflicts erupted – Mauritania and Tajikistan – both involving rebel groups that had previously fought in neighbouring countries. Only two peace agreements were concluded during the year. While this is one more than 2009, it is decidedly below the annual average for the post-Cold War period.
In 2011, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) recorded 37 armed conflicts with a minimum of 25 battle-related deaths. This significant increase from the 31 conflicts recorded in 2010 was primarily driven by an increase in conflicts on the African continent, and is only in part due to events tied to the Arab Spring which mostly led to other forms of violence than conventional armed conflict. The number of active conflicts still remains at a relatively low level compared to the peak years in the early 1990s, when more than 50 conflicts were active. The number of wars - conflicts leading to 1,000 or more battle-related deaths - increased to six; however, it is a considerably lower number than during the peak years of the early 1990s. For the second consecutive year, Afghanistan claimed the highest number of fatalities. Five armed conflicts listed for 2010 were not active in 2011, but during the year three new conflicts erupted - Libya, South Sudan and Sudan (Abyei) - and six conflicts already registered were restarted. Only one peace agreement was concluded during the year. Thus, the trend with low numbers of peace accords which started in 2009 continues.
In 2012, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) recorded 32 armed conflicts with a minimum of 25 battle-related deaths. This is a significant decrease from the 37 recorded in 2011. Overall, the 2000s has been the least conflict-ridden decade since the 1970s. A worrying finding, however, is that the number of internationalized intrastate conflicts continued to be at a high level for the fourth consecutive year. At six, the number of wars - conflicts leading to 1,000 or more battle-related deaths - remained the same as in 2011. In total, UCDP estimates that the conflicts that were active in 2012 caused between 37,175 (low estimate) and 60,260 (high estimate) battle-related deaths, with a best estimate of 37,941. The conflict that caused the highest number of fatalities in 2012 is the Syrian conflict, which led to between 14,830 (low) and 30,805 (high) battle-related deaths, with the best estimate being 15,055. Eleven armed conflicts listed in 2011 were not active in 2012; however, three new conflicts erupted during the year - India (Garoland), Mali and South Sudan vs. Sudan (common border) - and three previously registered conflicts were resumed by new actors. Lastly, 2012 saw an increase in the number of signed peace agreements which had been at a very low level over the past three years; four accords were concluded during the year, compared with one in 2011.
In 2013, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) recorded 33 armed conflicts with a minimum of 25 battle-related deaths, up by one from 2012. Seven of these were recorded as wars, that is conflicts leading to 1,000 or more battle-related deaths in a calendar year. There have been 144 armed conflicts (47 wars) since 1989 and 254 armed conflicts (114 wars) since 1946. For the past ten years the amount of active armed conflict has fluctuated between 31 and 37. Six peace agreements were signed during the year 2013, two more than in the previous year. For the first time, this article also provides data on trends in battle-related deaths since 1989. These data do not show a clear time-trend. However, there is a particular difficulty in mapping the conflict in Syria, for which no credible battle-related deaths in 2013 can yet be reported.