HEIDELBERG (dpa-AFX) – Conflict researchers recorded 20 wars worldwide last year – one fewer than the year before. This was announced by the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research (HIIK) on Friday. The sad reality has now caught up with the statistics: Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, which has been raging for a month, is not included as a war in the 2021 list. On the contrary, looking at the past year, the institute even reports a relaxation: “The conflict in the Donbass region between separatists and the Ukrainian government de-escalated from a limited war to a violent crisis.”
The institute has based its statistics on a grid that it uses to classify the conflicts – from disputes to wars with many deaths and massive destruction. Violent conflicts are divided according to intensity into violent crises, limited wars and wars. The main arguments and fights are about the ideological, religious, legal or socio-economic orientation of the political system, about power and about resources.
The Institute identified 355 (2020: 359) conflicts worldwide in 2021, including 204 violent ones. Five domestic disputes, for example in Ethiopia or Myanmar, escalated into wars in 2021. Seven wars de-escalated last year, 14 continued. Most wars were recorded in sub-Saharan Africa. 16 wars were fought there last year – 11 from the previous year maintained their intensity, five limited wars escalated.
The Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research was founded in 1990 and aims to record conflict events worldwide as precisely as possible and provide conflict cause research with data sets for further analysis./poi/DP/ngu