Conflict Data

Measuring armed conflicts and conflict deaths across the world helps us understand how people’s lives and livelihoods are affected by large-scale violence.

But this comes with many challenges. People do not always agree on what characteristics define an armed conflict. Even once defined, these characteristics — especially how many people died in them — are difficult to assess.

The people affected are not always asked who has died around them due to the conflict.

The conflict parties may underreport deaths to claim success, or overreport them to encourage intervention by third parties.

Independent observers may also struggle to be present in all places and document a conflict’s death toll.

So how do researchers address these challenges?

In our work on War and Peace, we provide data from six sources that identify armed conflicts and count their deaths:

Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP)1
Project Mars by Jason Lyall (2022)2
Militarized Interstate Events by Douglas Gibler and Steven Miller3
Correlates of War (CoW)4
Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)5
Conflict Catalog by Peter Brecke (1999)6
These sources all measure armed conflicts and their deaths; they cover many countries and years, and researchers and policymakers frequently use them.