United Nations – Armed conflicts are less deadly in the 21st century than they have been at any time in the past 55 years, according to a three-year survey on warfare and violence.
The Human Security Report, which was written by a professor at the University of British Columbia, concludes that the number of genocides or mass murders has declined sharply since the late 1980s, despite the large-scale slaughter of civilians during the past 11 years in Rwanda, Bosnia and Sudan.
And it asserts that the number of coups or attempted coups has fallen by 60 percent since 1963. The report’s research was paid for by Britain, Canada, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.
The report challenges the assumption that the world has become increasingly violent in the new century, with the proliferation of bloody conflicts in Africa and the Middle East. It also shows how the experience of the United States, which has lost more soldiers in Iraq than in any military operation since the Vietnam War, contrasts so starkly with much of the rest of the world.
“Warfare in the 21st century is far less deadly than it was half a century ago,” the report’s author, Andrew Mack, wrote. “The wars that dominated the headlines of the 1990s were real – and brutal – enough. But the global media have largely ignored the 100-odd conflicts that have quietly ended since 1988. During this period, more wars stopped than started.”
Mack said international terrorism is the only form of political violence that has worsened in recent years, citing data suggesting “a dramatic increase in the number of high-casualty attacks since the September 11 attacks on the U.S. in 2001.”
Mack challenged U.S. claims that terrorism constitutes the “gravest threat to international security” and cited some studies suggesting that the overall number of terrorist incidents has declined in the past 20 years.
