United Press International,
UNITED NATIONS: The independent Human Security Report released at the United Nations says that armed conflict declined by 40 percent since 1991, citing successes of UN conflict-resolution and peace-building policies.
The report, which was released on Monday, also found armed conflicts – defined as 1,000 or more battle-deaths per year – dropped by 80 percent since 1992, roughly about the time that the Cold War ended.
The 200-page report also found wars between countries are rarer and now constitute less than 5 percent of all armed conflicts; separately, the number of military coups declined by 60 percent since 1963.
The definition of armed conflict is narrow as it does not include genocide, and so excludes the death tolls for such genocides as Rwanda and Srebrenica. The data also does not include the indirect deaths from weapons such as landmines that are left after a conflict.
According to the report, the reason for the decline in armed conflict is threefold: The end of colonialism, which previously made up 60 percent of all international conflicts. The end of the Cold War, which had driven one-third of all conflicts following World War II; and an increase in international activities to stop ongoing wars by the use of UN diplomacy missions, peacekeeping operations and sanctions.
The mistaken perception, the report argues, is that Africa has been the center of many conflicts, but since 1946 it calculated that Myanmar, the former Burma, experienced 232 wars with neighbors, followed by India with 156, Israel with 79, Britain with 77 and France with 66.
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