War and Peace | Our World in Data

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Since 1800, more than 37 million people worldwide have died while actively fighting in wars.<br>The number would be much higher still if it also considered the civilians who died due to the fighting, the increased number of deaths from hunger and disease resulting from these conflicts, and the deaths in smaller conflicts that are not considered wars.1<br>Wars are also terrible in many other ways: they make people’s lives insecure, lower their living standards, destroy the environment, and, if fought between countries armed with nuclear weapons, can be an existential threat to humanity.<br>Looking at the news alone, it can be difficult to understand whether more or less people are dying as a result of war than in the past. One has to rely on statistics that are carefully collected so that they can be compared over time.<br>While every war is a tragedy, the data suggests that fewer people died in conflicts in recent decades than in most of the 20th century. Countries have also built more peaceful relations between and within them.<br>How many wars are avoided, and whether the trend of fewer deaths in them continues, is up to our own actions. Conflict deaths recently increased in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, stressing that the future of these trends is uncertain.<br>On this page, you can find data, visualizations, and writing on how common war and peace are between and within countries, and how this has changed over time.

Related topics<br>Military Personnel and Spending<br>Nuclear Weapons<br>Terrorism<br>Homicides

Key Insights on War and Peace

Some conflicts are much, much deadlier than most<br>Conflict deaths have declined; it is on us that this trend continues<br>Armed conflict is a rare cause of death in most years and countries<br>Some countries are much more affected by conflict than others<br>Armed conflict is common and takes different forms<br>Relationships between countries have become more peaceful

Some conflicts are much, much deadlier than most<br>There are very large differences in how deadly different wars are: most death tolls are relatively small, a few are large, and very few are extremely large.<br>The chart shows this for all conventional wars between 1800 and 2011, relying on data from Project Mars.2<br>Even though most wars killed several thousand people, we can barely make them out in the chart.3<br>This is because the big wars were much more deadly: wars like the Russian Civil War and the Korean War killed several hundred thousand people. And wars such as the Chinese Civil War and the Vietnam War killed between 1 and 2 million combatants.<br>But the deaths in the World Wars loom even over them: in World War I, more than 7 million soldiers died.<br>And in World War II alone, more than 21 million combatants died.<br>Three-quarters of all war deaths since 1800 happened in just these two wars, and 90% in the biggest ten wars; this is one of the reasons why we have to treat any trends over time with caution.

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Conflict deaths have declined; it is on us that this trend continues<br>Fewer people died in conflicts in recent decades than in most of the 20th century.<br>The chart shows that several million people died in conflicts in the years after World War II.<br>After falling to much lower levels in the 1950s, conflict deaths surged again in the 1970s and 1980s. But this time, they peaked at 300,000 deaths annually.<br>They fell to much lower levels in the 1990s and have stayed below previous peaks in the decades since.<br>We see these lower numbers of deaths also in other data sources.<br>But there are several reasons we cannot be confident that this decline in conflict deaths will continue.<br>First, the chart shows more deaths in the last decade and, most recently, a spike in deaths due to wars in Ethiopia and Ukraine. The trends also differ by world region: deaths have plummeted and stayed low for Asia and Oceania, but they have recently increased in the Middle East and soared in Africa and Europe.<br>One more reason we cannot be confident is that the deadliness of conflicts shows a lot of variation from year to year. Some wars are much deadlier than others, so a single deadly conflict could change this trend completely. Researchers have used statistical tests to tell actual trends from random fluctuations but have come to different conclusions.4<br>But the absence of a clear trend should not cause despair: countries have built more peaceful relations between and within them. It is up to us that these historical trends continue over the next decades and centuries.<br>What you should know about this data<br>There are several other leading approaches to measuring conflicts. You can explore them in our Conflict Data Explorer.

Armed conflict is a rare cause of death in most years and countries<br>Globally, close to 80,000 people died due to fighting in armed conflicts in 2019.<br>This means conflicts caused around 1 in 700 deaths.<br>This is shown in the chart, which presents what people died from during that year. You can...