Important Takeaways:

• Conflicts reach highest peak globally since World War II
• Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Syria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colombia… and so on. There are up to 56 active conflicts in the world, the highest number since World War II. Moreover, these carry an increasingly international component, with 92 countries involved in wars outside their borders. These are data from the latest Global Peace Index produced annually by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP), a think tank that analyzes everything from military investment and the cost of violence to military laws and deaths in combat in 163 states and territories. “Getting the information is a challenge, but it allows us to compare dynamics. And what we see is a deterioration of peace over the last decade, especially in the last five years,” says Michael Collins, executive director of IEP.
• The risk of low-intensity hostilities erupting into open conflict has also increased. Moreover, Collins warns, “this year is a high-risk year because half of humanity is voting and the world is increasingly polarized. We see risk of conflict spillover. We see sparks that can start a fire,” he adds. “There are a lot of unresolved but dormant conflicts.” At any time, the report warns, these can flare up and become major wars. This has happened, the authors cite, with cases such as Sudan or Gaza, which in last year’s edition of the study were on the list of unstable territories with low-intensity hostilities and have since escalated to the category of wars.

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