Abstract
The alarming upward trend since 2012 in the number of fatalities incurred by organized violence did not continue in 2015. Indeed, 2014 saw more than 130,000 people killed in organized violence while in 2015 this figure was close to 118,000. This is still an unusually high number, the third-worst year in the post-Cold War period. The number of conflicts continued to increase from 41 in 2014 to 50 in 2015. This increase was by and large driven by the expansion of the Islamic State. Most of the fatalities, over 97,000, incurred in state-based conflicts. Non-state conflicts also increased, from 61 in 2014 to 70 in 2015, the highest number recorded in the 1989–2015 period. No non-state conflict passed the threshold of 1,000 battle-related deaths, but 11 state-based conflicts did – a decrease by one from 2014. Seven of the ten most violent state-based conflicts in 2014 became less violent. Twenty-six actors were registered in one-sided violence just as in 2014, while the number of fatalities decreased from over 13,500 to 9,500.
Introduction
For the first time, this annual update from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) presents trends in state-based armed conflict, 1 non-state conflict, and one-sided violence. Traditionally, we have focused on state-based armed conflict, but broadening the scope yields a more complete and nuanced picture. Countries with few state-based armed conflicts (or even none) may be ravaged by fighting between non-state actors and by actors targeting civilians. A case in point is Kenya. From 1983 to 2014, no state-based violence was recorded. However, Kenya was hardly at peace. Since 1989 there has been almost constant fighting between different ethnic groups (non-state conflicts), and the security forces as well as militias and rebel groups have intentionally targeted and killed hundreds of civilians (one-sided violence). Coded as mutually exclusive, the three categories can be aggregated as ‘organized violence’.
Following the data update, we explore the phenomenon of transnational jihadist groups, 2 such as the Islamic State (IS), 3 al-Qaida, and their affiliates. Looking at these groups through the lens of UCDP data from 1989, we attempt to place their actions in a wider context.
Organized violence
The three subcategories of organized violence share the same intensity cut-off – 25 fatalities in a calendar year. 4 State-based armed conflict includes all cases where at least one of the parties is the government of a state, that is, armed conflicts between states and within states (government vs. a rebel group). They range from small conflicts active only for a year or two (e.g. the 1997 territorial conflict over Anjouan Island in the Comoros) to large-scale wars over decades (e.g. the government conflict in Colombia, active since 1964). Non-state conflicts include fights between rebel groups and militias, such as that between Lord’s Resistance Army and Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but also conflicts between informally organized groups, notably between groups with a common identification along ethnic, clan, religious, national, or tribal lines. Examples include Hindu–Muslim violence in India, as well as fights between Lou Nuer and Murle in Sudan, the latter often triggered by cattle rustling. Finally, one-sided violence entails the targeted killing of unarmed civilians, by states or formally organized non-state groups.
Figure 1 shows that while the total number of fatalities in 2015 was very high, the alarming upward trend since 2012 did not continue. In 2014 more than 130,000 people were killed in all the three forms of organized violence, but in 2015 this figure decreased to 118,000. 5 While 2014 was the second-worst year in the post-Cold War period in terms of fatalities, 2015 was placed third. This is largely driven by developments in Syria which account for more than 50% of all state-based conflict fatalities in these two years. The peak for all organized conflict fatalities in the 1989–2015 period is, however, recorded for 1994, mainly due to the genocide in Rwanda, which is estimated at 500,000. This is an illustration of the importance of including all three categories of organized violence. 6 One-sided violence often takes place in the context of civil war. Reviewing the three categories of violence jointly provides a more complete understanding of trends in violence.
While Figure 1 reveals that most fatalities occur in state-based armed conflict, one-sided violence accounts not only for the peak in 1994, but also for an uptick in organized violence in 1996, when the Congolese rebel group AFDL carried out large-scale massacres against Hutu refugees in eastern DR Congo.
As Figure 1 also shows, non-state conflict has only a marginal influence on the overall trend. Non-state conflicts generally involve fewer individuals and are usually fought with small arms. Moreover, few non-state actors have access to well-trained and well-equipped armies. Nonetheless, they can cause considerable human suffering. Low-scale non-state conflicts pitting different ethnic groups against each other may also escalate into conflicts involving states. Some non-state conflicts are Fatalities in organized violence, 1989–2015
Table I lists the ten countries most affected by organized violence, illustrating how the picture changes when all three categories of organized violence are considered and not only state-based armed conflicts.
State-based armed conflict 1946–2015
Since the end of World War II, 587 dyads have been active in 275 conflicts in 159 locations. Corresponding numbers for the post-Cold War period are 487 dyads in 166 conflicts in 93 locations. 7
The ten most conflict-affected countries in terms of fatalities, 1989–2015
UCDP records four new IS branches (or Wilayat, i.e. provinces of the caliphate) emerging in 2014–15, in Afghanistan, Libya, Russia, and Yemen. They appear to have been set up as a combination of conscious efforts by core-IS groups, the switching of loyalty by powerful commanders, and recruitment of fighters from already established groups, as illustrated by the new IS wing set up in the Russian Caucasus. That area had seen continuous conflict since 2007 with the Caucasus Emirate’s forces fighting the Russian government. The group was severely weakened in 2013–14, with much of its leadership eliminated, and existing networks of power and loyalties unravelled. A number of local leaders of the insurgency then pledged allegiance to IS and by May 2015, a majority of the rebels in the Russian Caucasus had left their mother organization. However, a small nucleus remains, and the conflict over the Caucasus Emirate thus continued in 2015, in addition to the new conflict, which pitted the government against IS (Borshchevskaya, 2016; Caucasus Knot, 2015).
Two groups had previously fought under their own banner, but pledged allegiance to IS in late 2014 or early 2015. These were Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad, more commonly known as Boko Haram,
10
and State-based armed conflict by type, 1946–2015
Returning to the overview of the 2015 conflicts, Figure 2 shows that most conflicts were intrastate rather than interstate – as has been the case in the entire period since World War II. In fact, only one of the 50 conflicts was fought between states (India–Pakistan). The remaining 49 conflicts were fought within states. However, 2015 stands out because of the proliferation of internationalized intrastate conflicts, that is, conflicts where at least one of the parties is supported with troops from an external state. External troop involvement has been a persistent phenomenon since the early 1960s. Since 2012, this subtype of state-based armed conflict has witnessed an unprecedented increase. In 2015, 40% of all armed conflicts (20 out of 50) were internationalized, the highest share recorded to date. External troop involvement tends to both prolong conflicts and make them more lethal (Balch-Lindsay, Enterline & Joyce, 2008; Lacina, 2006).
In 2015, 11 conflicts reached the intensity of war, with at least 1,000 battle-related deaths sustained, a decrease by one from 2014. For the most recent decade, this is a high number, but not when seen in a longer perspective. The highest number was recorded in 1988, with 16 conflicts classified as wars.
Figure 1 reveals that the unprecedented increase in overall conflict intensity recorded for 2014 (Pettersson & Wallensteen, 2015) did not continue in 2015. Rather, while remaining at an exceptionally high level for the post-Cold War period, the number of battle-related deaths decreased, from a little over 104,000 in 2014 to a little over 97,000 in 2015. This period has three peaks in fatality numbers: in the early 1990s (mainly driven by events in Ethiopia, but also the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent Gulf War), in the late 1990s (again, largely because of fighting in the Horn of Africa), and most recently in 2013–15. Roughly half of the current peak is due to the wars in Syria, with more than 56,000 battle-related deaths in 2014 and 45,000 in 2015.
Non-state conflict 1989–2015
A total of 590 non-state conflicts have been recorded by UCDP since 1989, with a yearly average of 35 active conflicts. The number of active non-state conflicts tends to oscillate heavily from one year to the next as this type of violence often occurs as a sudden outburst followed by an equally rapid de-escalation. Since 2010, however, there has been a clear upward trend in the number of active non-state conflicts. This is largely driven by conflicts between different drug cartels in Mexico, as well as fighting between different rebel groups in Syria. The last three years have seen the highest number of non-state conflicts since the start of the time series in 1989. In 2015, UCDP recorded 70 non-state conflicts, the highest ever and up from 61 in 2014. However, none of them passed the threshold of 1,000 battle-related deaths.
The UCDP best estimates of the numbers of people killed in non-state conflicts vary between 2,123 in 2005 Non-state fatalities by type of actor, 1989–2015
In the last few years, the most common type of non-state conflict has been between formally organized groups, most notably interrebel fighting in Syria and conflicts between drug cartels in Mexico. These conflicts account for most of the substantial increase in non-state fatalities in recent years shown in Figure 3. Over the entire period since 1989, however, conflicts between less organized groups, so-called communal conflicts, are more common. In Africa, the region most affected by non-state violence, communal conflicts account for the vast majority, whereas in the rest of the world, conflicts between rebel groups or militias dominate the picture.
In 2015, as many as 33 of the 70 non-state conflicts occurred in Africa, but the conflicts in the Middle East accounted for more fatalities (almost 5,400 compared with 3,500). Non-state violence in Africa has been concentrated in a handful of highly affected countries: Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya.
One-sided violence 1989–2015
A total of 246 actors in one-sided violence have been recorded by UCDP for the time period 1989–2015, with an annual average of 32 active actors. The number of active one-sided actors fluctuates quite a bit from one year to the next, but appears to be on a downward trend over the last decade. In 2015, 26 actors were registered in UCDP one-sided violence data, the same as in 2014.
The number of actors does not necessarily reflect the number of civilians killed in this type of violence. Instead, the trend is driven by a few extremely lethal cases, most notably the Rwandan genocide in 1994, the massacres of refugees carried out by the AFDL in 1996 and 1997, and the ethnic cleansing carried out by Bosnian Serbs during the war in the 1990s. Figure 4 shows that up to 1994, the number of fatalities from one-sided violence was rather stable at around 10,000 per year. The year 1994 was an extreme outlier with a total of 509,000 deaths, an estimated 500,000 of them in Rwanda. The following years were also quite violent. After 1998, the number of fatalities dropped, and except for a small peak in 2002, the 2000–12 period saw relatively low levels of one-sided violence, never exceeding 10,000 fatalities. However, in 2013 the number of civilians killed in one-sided violence started to increase again, reaching at least 13,500 fatalities in 2014.
In 2015, at least 9,500 civilians were targeted and killed by states or formally organized actors; a decrease from 2014 but still higher than most years in the 2000s. IS was by far the most violent actor in 2015, responsible for almost 63% of the total number of civilians killed. Although it is not uncommon for actors to carry out violence against civilians in more than one country, IS was responsible for killings in no less than 18 countries, way above any other group. The group’s actions have attracted substantial media attention, peaking in Western media after the attack in Paris on 13 November, which killed 130 people. However, most killings carried out by IS in 2015 occurred in Nigeria (almost 2,500), Syria (more than 1,200), and Iraq (almost 1,000). 11
Even excluding the Rwanda genocide, Africa is the region most affected by one-sided violence, in terms of the number of actors as well as the number of civilians killed. Asia is in second place, although more fatalities were recorded in the Middle East in the last five years, primarily as a consequence of the growth of IS but also the Syrian government’s crackdown on protesters after the Arab spring.
The genocide in Rwanda was perpetrated by the government. In other one-sided violence, non-state actors One-sided fatalities by type of actor, 1989–2015
Transnational jihadist groups, 1989–2015
The expansion of transnational jihadist groups like IS and al-Qaida and their affiliates represents one of the most distinctive trends in organized violence since the end of the Cold War. Yet, the formidable capacity of these groups for fighting, one-sided killings, and the control of territory needs to be put in perspective. While the transnational jihadists occupy center stage today, they stand out less when compared to other actors that have engaged in organized violence in modern history. Arguably, an important reason why IS and al-Qaida attract so much international attention is that they have carried out major attacks in powerful Western nations such as the United States and France. However, the overwhelming majority of the deaths have been inflicted in other parts of the world.
We define transnational jihadism as the immediate or future aim of a non-state group to establish a caliphate across internationally recognized borders, using violence. Of the many groups fighting for self-proclaimed Islamist aspirations, only a few have transnational ambitions (cf. Ashour, 2011) and this article focuses on the Fatalities in organized violence, IS, al-Qaeda, and affiliates, 1989–2015
In 2015, 25 of the 45 non-state groups active in state-based armed conflict were coded as IS, al-Qaida, or affiliates. Several of these engaged in non-state violence and one-sided violence as well. In recent years, transnational jihadist groups have been involved in most of the fatalities in organized violence. 13 Of the 118,000 deaths in all forms of organized violence in 2015, more than half (66,000) occurred in episodes involving IS, al-Qaida, and their affiliates. Even excluding the affiliates, they account for almost one-third of all deaths.
Over time there is a steady growth in the number of deaths in organized violence involving transnational jihadists (Figure 5). The broken line in the middle of the figure represents the number of deaths in episodes involving IS, al-Qaida, and their affiliates. The bottom line represents the fatalities relating solely to IS and al-Qaida. The groups studied here enter the UCDP datasets in the early 1990s in the form of various al-Qaida affiliated groups, such as ASG in the Philippines, and the Taleban 14 in Afghanistan. The middle line shows a steady increase in transnational jihadist violence, and in three years (2007, 2010, and 2015) the jihadist violence constitutes more than half of all deaths globally. Important milestones for the growth in transnational jihadist violence are 2001 with the attacks on 11 September and the ensuing US invasion of Afghanistan the same year, and the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in 2011 (cf. Gleditsch & Rudolfsen, 2016).
There is no doubt that IS and al-Qaida have grown into a severe threat to peace over the last two decades. Yet, although these groups have engaged in violence in numerous locations, they have achieved remarkably few victories or even negotiated peace deals with the governments they are fighting (Svensson, 2007, 2012). IS and al-Qaida are not signatories to any peace agreement registered by UCDP (Harbom, Högbladh & Wallensteen, 2006), and neither have these groups achieved any military victory (Kreutz, 2010). 15 Other types of rebel groups have repeatedly been able to overthrow governments (e.g. in Ethiopia, DR Congo, and Rwanda) or achieve part of their aims through concessions forced from the government adversary and codified in peace agreements (e.g. in former Yugoslavia, Aceh, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mozambique, Northern Ireland).
Achieving outright victory or gaining important concessions recognized in peace agreements are common criteria for assessing the extent to which armed non-state groups reach their goals. Transnational jihadists may have goals that do not translate easily into clear victories or negotiated agreements. Moreover, al-Qaida and IS may have somewhat different goals and these goals may have changed over time. A minimalist interpretation of al-Qaida’s objectives is for all non-Muslim troops to be driven out of the Arabian Peninsula; a maximalist interpretation is that of an Islamic caliphate stretching from Andalusia in Spain to the West to Indonesia in the East. 16 Either goal depends on revealing the weakness of the USA. This in turn would undermine ‘apostate’ regimes in the Islamic world viewed as dependent on US support, for example Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Indonesia (Friedman, 2009: 55). A key reason why IS broke away from al-Qaida in 2013 seems to be that the IS wanted to establish itself as a caliphate, whereas al-Qaida at the time preferred to continue preparing towards a future caliphate by resisting the ‘Crusaders’, striking in particular at the ‘head of the snake’, the USA and Israel (Milton, 2014; Saltman & Winter, 2014: 16–17). Regardless of whether al-Qaida’s true goals are closer to the minimalist or the maximalist interpretation, the organization has not achieved them; ‘Crusaders’ are still present in the region and the hated apostate regimes remain in power (even if governments have changed). The only substantial goal realized so far is the establishment of the unrecognized and embattled caliphate by IS in parts of Iraq and Syria.
The transnational jihadist groups studied here have managed to escalate the fighting intensity and one-sided killing to very high levels. However, compared with other non-state armed groups, their military achievements are decidedly unremarkable, except for the fighting involving IS in Iraq and Syria. In terms of sustained fighting, the affiliated group Taleban has a more impressive track record. The fighting pitting the Taleban against Afghanistan’s government with its external supporters has inflicted more than 85,000 battle deaths over 15 years. The other military campaigns by IS, al-Qaida, and affiliates have resulted in fighting of considerably lower intensity. Many rebel groups have been able to escalate their military effort to years of sustained fighting with thousands or even tens of thousands of battle-related deaths per year (e.g. EPLF, UNITA, PKK, and LTTE). 17
As shown in Appendix 1, the Syrian civil war is primarily a fight between the government and the opposition referred to in UCDP data as ‘Syrian insurgents’. 18 Only groups with a stated incompatibility over government are included in ‘Syrian insurgents’. IS and PYD (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat: Democratic Union Party) are coded separately due to their territorial claims (Islamic State and Rojava Kurdistan respectively). While the al-Qaida group Jabhat al-Nusra li al-Sham and some of its affiliates are included in this group, most of the at least 1,000 groups fighting the Syrian government are not parts of the IS or al-Qaida network. The actor ‘Syrian insurgents’ is therefore not registered as part of these transnational networks.
In terms of the intensity of the fighting as measured by the number of battle-related deaths per year, the Syrian civil war is clearly the worst conflict since 1989. The relative military and political success of IS in Syria and Iraq is remarkable. However, at the time of writing, it is the only case in which IS or al-Qaida has achieved long-term territorial control and sustained fighting. 19 In the Syrian civil war, the fighting involving IS constitutes a lesser part of the total death toll than the fighting between other rebel groups and the government forces. In this sense, the confrontation with IS in Syria can be seen as relatively minor. It seems very unlikely that IS would have been able to establish and defend its caliphate had the governments of Syria and Iraq been able and willing to concentrate their military efforts against IS. Moreover, compared to what many other rebel groups have achieved, this level of success in establishing control over territory by force is not unique.
When it comes to the one-sided killing of civilians, the transnational jihadists are also overshadowed by governments, as well as other non-state actors. 20 The one-sided killings perpetrated by IS in 2015, aggregated over all locations (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Chad, Egypt, France, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Yemen) add up to almost 6,000 deaths, making IS the fourth most fatal actor-year in one-sided killing since 1989. The Rwandan genocide in 1994 is so much worse than anything else during this period that one might think of it as a qualitatively different phenomenon altogether. But the massacres by AFDL in the DR Congo in 1996 were also more than five times as lethal as the total one-sided killings by IS in 2015. Currently, media reports and policy debates naturally tend to be preoccupied with the horrifying atrocities in the Middle East and Africa, but the killings by the Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbian irregulars in former Yugoslavia in 1995 surpassed the worst year of killings by the IS.
A clear strength of the transnational jihadist movement is its ability to attract fighters from many different countries willing to fight for the transnational goals of the caliphate and to shift human and other resources between countries (Hegghammer, 2010). To be sure, foreign fighters have joined local conflicts on many occasions, as exemplified by the mujahideen fighting on the side of the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1992–95 war. But the transnational jihadist movements are different in that their goals transcend international borders. Clearly, substantial numbers of militants are willing to join IS and al-Qaida in many places. Thus, the transnational jihadists may continue to grow in strength, consolidate their gains, and achieve more of their objectives in the future. At the same time, transnational jihadism seems to face several inherent impediments. While this is a topic beyond the scope of this article, we note two. First, the attempt to transcend ethnic and parochial identities makes the international jihadists less credible champions of specific local causes than rival armed groups that also espouse an Islamist ideology but limit their ambitions geographically. Indeed, the limits of the transnational jihadist appeal have caused the IS and al-Qaida groups to end up fighting other non-state groups to such an extent that it has dominated non-state conflict in recent years. This is most evident in Syria but can be observed in other countries as well.
Second, the transnational jihadist groups have received limited support from states. No major power openly supports IS or al-Qaida (although Saudi Arabia is accused of turning a blind eye to private donations). The dynamics would have been very different if a major power had thrown its weight behind the transnational jihadist movement. For comparison, consider the support given by the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War to various socialist movements and the regimes of socialist allies such as Cuba, the German Democratic Republic, and North Korea. This type of global proxy warfare resulted in wars on a scale that has not been seen since – notably, the wars in Korea and Vietnam.
Conclusion
The alarming upward trend in fatalities in organized violence, witnessed since 2012, did not continue in 2015. In fact, there was a slight decline of deaths in organized violence. Nevertheless, 2015 was an unusually bloody year by post-Cold War standards. By and large, this was driven by developments in Syria. This is especially the case for state-based armed conflict. It is encouraging that in all three categories of organized violence – state-based armed conflict, non-state conflict, and one-sided violence – numbers of fatalities declined in 2015.
While the number of one-sided actors remained unchanged at 26, the number of non-state conflicts increased from 61 conflicts in 2014, to 70 in 2015 – the highest number during the entire 1989–2015 period. State-based armed conflicts also became more numerous, from 41 in 2014 to 50 in 2015. This increase was largely driven by developments relating to the expansion of IS.
Finally, the transnational jihadist movement presently represents a grave threat to peace, and IS, in particular, contributes immense suffering and destruction to the wider war in Syria and Iraq. While most fatalities are recorded in the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia, the jihadists have also demonstrated an ability to threaten and terrorize people in powerful developed nations that have otherwise been relatively spared from large-scale political violence. The threat posed by IS, al-Qaida, and their affiliates will remain at the top of the agenda of many national governments and international organizations. Yet, in a comparative perspective, the relative weakness of these jihadist groups stands out, an insight that should inform policymaking. An exaggerated focus on transnational jihadist networks also risks drawing attention away from other very serious situations that require action, such as the intensifying conflict in Burundi, the escalation of the conflict between Turkey and PKK, and the deadlock in the war in Ukraine, as well as struggling peace processes in very long-standing conflicts with enormous destructive potential in Colombia, Myanmar, and the Philippines.
Footnotes
Authors’ note
The data for all three categories included in organized violence go back to 1989; for state-based armed conflict they extend back to 1946.
Acknowledgements
Numerous colleagues in Uppsala have contributed to the data collection, notably Marie Allansson, Mihai Croicu, Emma Elfversson, Garoun Engström, Helena Grusell, Stina Högbladh, Gabrielle Lövquist, Henrik Persson, Margareta Sollenberg, Ralph Sundberg, and Samuel Taub. A special thanks for comments on the first draft by Isak Svensson and Margareta Sollenberg. We are grateful to Martin Tegnander for assistance with designing Figures 1, 4, and 
.
Replication data
The complete datasets (UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset, UCDP Dyadic Dataset, UCDP Battle-Related Dataset, UCDP Non-State Dataset, and UCDP One-Sided Dataset) updated to 2015 are found at http://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/. Older versions of these datasets can also be found at this address (all datasets) and www.prio.no/cscw/armedconflict (the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset). The tables and figures in this article were created directly from the Excel sheets at the UCDP web page. Detailed descriptions of the individual cases are found in the UCDP Conflict Encyclopedia at www.ucdp.uu.se/. Replication data for this article can be found both at http://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/ and .
Notes
Appendix 1. State-based armed conflicts active in 2015
This list includes all conflicts that exceeded the minimum threshold of 25 battle-related deaths in 2015 and fulfilled the other criteria for inclusion.1 The column Year shows the latest range of years in which the conflict has been active without interruption. The start year is in parentheses in the Incompatibility column, which indicates when the armed conflict reached 25 battle-related deaths for the first time. If a conflict has been inactive for more than ten years or if there has been a complete change in the opposition side, the start year refers to the onset of the latest phase of the conflict. For more complete information on the conflict history and dyad history, see (a) the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset and the UCDP Dyadic Dataset and (b) the Uppsala Conflict Data Program’s online conflict encyclopedia, at www.ucdp.uu.se. The column Intensity in 2015 displays the aggregated conflict intensity in terms of the number of battle-related deaths. Thus, if more than one dyad is active in the conflict, the Intensity column records their aggregated intensity. Three fatality estimates are given in the table: Low, Best, and High.2
Appendix 2. Non-state conflicts active in 2015
This list includes all non-state conflicts that exceeded the minimum threshold of 25 deaths in 2015 and fulfilled the other criteria for inclusion.1 The column Start year shows the first year when the non-state conflict caused at least 25 fatalities (since 1988). The column Fatalities in 2015 displays the number of people killed, in the Low, Best, and High estimate.
Appendix 3. One-sided violence in 2015
This list includes all cases of one-sided violence that exceeded the minimum threshold of 25 fatalities in 2015 and fulfilled the other criteria for inclusion.1 The column Start year shows the first year when one-sided violence caused at least 25 fatalities (since 1988). The column Fatalities in 2015 displays the number of civilians killed, in the Low, Best and High estimate.