59 conflicts took place last year involving countries, the highest since Uppsala began collecting figures in 1946
An Indian Army soldier stands guard in Kashmir. iStock photo for representation
A whopping 60,465 people have died due to violence in India from 1989-2023, according to figures released by Uppsala University, Sweden on June 3, 2024.
Of these 60,465 deaths, 42,177 deaths were caused due to ‘state-based violence’, 5,324 in non-state violence and 12,694 in one-sided violence.
Meanwhile, the overall level of violence in India in 2023 remained roughly on the same level as 2022, according to the university, with an increase in 10 fatalities compared to the previous year.
State-based violence continued the downward trend of the past few years, whereas the level of one-sided violence has remained at roughly the same levels as the year before.
“However, the level of non-state violence escalated dramatically, resulting in 110 deaths in 2023 compared to 6 deaths the year prior,” the university noted.
India’s most violent non-state conflict in 2023 was the one between ethnic Kuki and Meitei people in Manipur. “The conflict resulted in 102 recorded fatalities. It should be noted that due to communication blackouts and information scarcity, it has been difficult to provide an accurate description of the situation,” according to Uppsala.
Conflicts galore
Meanwhile, the world has literally been at war. The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) found that 59 conflicts took place last year involving states. This is the highest number since the UCDP’s starting point in 1946.
There have been peaks before. Both 2020 and 2022 recorded 56 conflicts each, less than the 59 in 2023.
However, a silver lining is that the number of deaths from conflict violence in 2023 halved compared to the previous year. This was mainly because the deadly conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region ended at the end of 2022.
“However, we can still see several unusually deadly wars going on, such as the war in Ukraine with almost 71,000 deaths last year, and Israel’s war against Hamas where UCDP recorded over 22,000 deaths in 2023,” said Shawn Davies, senior analyst at UCDP.
The total number of deaths from organised violence worldwide halved last year compared to the year before, from 310,000 to 154,000.
Still, the university noted that 2023 was one of the bloodiest years since UCDP began collecting data on deaths in conflicts in 1989.
“Only three years have been more deadly than 2023. Aside from the 1994 Rwandan genocide, 2021 and 2022 make it onto that list,” said Davies.
Last year saw nine wars (conflicts with more than 1,000 deaths per year). This figure is one more than the year before and the highest figure since 2017.
“Most wars took place in Africa, with the civil war in Sudan that broke out in 2023 being the third deadliest conflict of the year, after the wars in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine,” said the university.
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