News items (and blog entries about news items) tend to be pretty depressing. One cheerful piece of information that has not had much publicity (though my boss has been mentioning it) is that the University of British Columbia’s Human Security Report finds, against the conventional wisdom, that the world is in fact becoming a safer place:

Over the past dozen years, the global security climate has changed in dramatic, positive, but largely unheralded ways. Civil wars, genocides and international crises have all declined sharply. International wars, now only a small minority of all conflicts, have been in steady decline for a much longer period, as have military coups and the average number of people killed per conflict per year.

The wars that dominated the headlines of the 1990s were real—and brutal—enough. But the global media have largely ignored the 100-odd conflicts that have quietly ended since 1988. During this period, more wars stopped than started.

The extent of the change in global security following the end of the Cold War has been remarkable:

• The number of armed conflicts around the world has declined by more than 40% since the early 1990s.
• Between 1991 (the high point for the post–World War II period) and 2004, 28 armed struggles for self-determination started or restarted, while 43 were contained or ended. There were just 25 armed secessionist conflicts under way in 2004, the lowest number since 1976.
• Notwithstanding the horrors of Rwanda, Srebrenica and elsewhere, the number of genocides and politicides plummeted by 80% between the 1988 high point and 2001.
• International crises, often harbingers of war, declined by more than 70% between 1981 and 2001.
• The dollar value of major international arms transfers fell by 33% between 1990 and 2003. Global military expenditure and troop numbers declined sharply in the 1990s as well.
• The number of refugees dropped by some 45% between 1992 and 2003, as more and more wars came to an end.
• Five out of six regions in the developing world saw a net decrease in core human rights abuses between 1994 and 2003.

The positive changes noted above date from the end of the Cold War. Other changes can be traced back to the 1950s:

• The average number of battle-deaths per conflict per year—the best measure of the deadliness of warfare—has been falling dramatically but unevenly since the 1950s. In 1950, for example, the average armed conflict killed 38,000 people; in 2002 the figure was 600, a 98% decline.
• The period since the end of World War II is the longest interval of uninterrupted peace between the major powers in hundreds of years.
• The number of actual and attempted military coups has been declining for more than 40 years. In 1963 there were 25 coups and attempted coups around the world, the highest number in the post–World War II period. In 2004 there were only 10 coup attempts—a 60% decline. All of them failed.

International terrorism is the only form of political violence that appears to be getting worse, but the data are contested. Although some datasets have shown an overall decline in international terrorist incidents since the early 1980s, the most recent data suggest a dramatic increase in the number of high-casualty attacks since the September 11 attacks on the US in 2001.

There is, of course, no room for complacency, especially with regard to Africa where more than half of the world’s conflicts are currently raging. (I tell everyone who asks me that West Africa is the place you really ought to be studying right now if you want your career in international relations to take off in the next few years – there have been two successful coups d’etat there this year, and be honest, did any of you notice? But very few ask me, and fewer listen.) But it’s fascinating and encouraging stuff. Those of us who make our living from analysing conlict would much prefer it if there was no need for our services.