LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The conflict in Sudan is just one of the armed conflicts pushing global violence to record highs. Therese Pettersson tracks global violence for the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University in Sweden.
What does your research show us about how violent the world is right now overall?
THERESE PETTERSSON: The main finding is that the number of armed conflicts involving states reached a record high in 2025. And of those conflicts, also the number of conflicts between states, where states are involved on both sides, those doubled for the second year in a row, reaching the highest level recorded by the UCDP since the data collection started in 1946. And we also see a record high number of fatalities. It's the second deadliest year since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. So overall, it's definitely a more violent world at the moment.
FADEL: I mean, the biggest that we're hearing about right now is Israel's war in Gaza and Russia in Ukraine.
PETTERSSON: And Gaza is also one of the deadliest conflicts, but the Russia-Ukraine war accounted for around 62% of the global fatalities in state-based armed conflict. Sudan is dominating the one-sided violence against civilians category. But the world's deadliest conflict was, in fact, Russia-Ukraine.
FADEL: What other conflicts do you categorize as one-sided violence against civilians?
PETTERSSON: So one-sided violence against civilians is carried out by both non-state actors such as IS, the Islamic State, in many countries, RSF in Sudan. But we also have state actors carrying out this type of violence. So some notable cases from 2025 is the government of Syria, which has had troubles managing the ethnic tensions in the country following the fall of the Assad regime. So we've seen a lot of massacres of civilians in the coastal areas and in the south. And also in Tanzania, following the October 2025 elections where we had a lot of violence carried out against protesters.
FADEL: So the Conflict Data Program is viewed as the world's leading data source on organized violence. But I'm curious how you gather that data, especially, as I'm hearing you mention, you know, governments that aren't reporting it or you have to trust that the warring parties are telling you the truth.
PETTERSSON: So what we do is try to use as many different original sources as possible. So to triangulate the information coming out, we try to evaluate who is saying this. Do they have an interest in portraying the situation in a certain way? We usually trust warring parties when they admit their own losses but not necessarily when they claim losses from the other side. And we also revise the data all the time. When new or better information becomes available, we go back and update it. So in cases such as Sudan and Ukraine that are very intense, the information on fatality numbers usually changes as time passes.
FADEL: In the report, you and your colleagues write that the high number of conflicts and wars recorded last year support the idea that Pax Americana and the liberal world order are coming to an end. What does that mean?
PETTERSSON: Our data, it doesn't really allow us to identify the cause of the patterns that we see. But we do see that this expectation that the post-Cold War era would see fewer conflicts between states, for example, that's not really what we're seeing in the data. So wars between states are becoming more common. And this could be a sign that we have a world which is characterized by growing geopolitical competition, that the U.S. is not having this role as the world police anymore. But what this means for the future, of course, that's something that we will need to evaluate later.
FADEL: Therese Pettersson is a senior analyst with the Uppsala Conflict Data Program at Uppsala University in Sweden. Thank you so much for your time.
PETTERSSON: Thank you for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF SILENT ISLAND'S "RIVER TALE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
