Warning: We're facing a peace epidemic

Relax and enjoy the insurgency. You'll be surprised to know that we're living in the most tranquil time in decades.


The recent wave of sectarian violence has brought Iraq to the brink of civil war. In Afghanistan terrorists have stepped up attacks and regained control over many provinces. Tension over Iran’s nuclear ambition signals yet another devastating war.

The Middle East conflict appears to be unending. And grinding poverty, unremitting genocide and several intrastate conflicts continue to threaten civilians in Africa. Few, then, will doubt that the world security is getting worse.

But contrary to what appears to be conventional wisdom, two independent security reports have revealed that the world is more peaceful than at any time since the Second World War.

The reports by the University of British Columbia’s Human Security Centre (HSC) and the University of Maryland’s Peace and Conflict Report 2005 have drawn similar conclusions.

The HSC report indicates that there has been a dramatic and sustained decline in the number of armed conflicts since the end of the Cold War. “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.”

It continues: “Notwithstanding the horrors of Rwanda, Srebrenica and elsewhere, the number of genocides and politi­cides plummeted by 80% between the 1988 high point and 2001... The number of refugees dropped by some 45% be­tween 1992 and 2003, as more and more wars came to an end.”

The findings of the University of Maryland’s Peace and Conflict Report are quite similar. “The decline in the global magnitude of armed conflict, following a peak in the early 1990s, has persisted… Major societal wars are down from twelve at the end of 2002 to eight in early 2005.”

It is worth noting that UN’s 2005 annual Human Development Report has also concluded that the world security, health and economic conditions have got better.

“ Life expectancy in the developing world has lengthened by two years, child mortality rate has dropped considerably, and most importantly, more than 130 million people have been rescued from extreme poverty.” Despite the rapid spread of AIDS, the report claims, health hazards are on a sharp decline.

Andrew Mack, who directed the HSC report, says that despite prevailing security threats around the world, peace is breaking out all over. “It is not surprising that most people believe global violence is increasing. However, most people, including many leading policymakers and scholars, are wrong,” he says.

Mack, who was UN’s strategic planning chief, blames the media for presenting an incorrect image of global security. He says: “The global media give far more coverage to wars that start than to those that quietly end.” He also criticises international security organisations for “not collecting global or regional data on any form of political violence”.

He argues that over the past 15 years the number of armed conflicts has fallen by 40 per cent, genocides by 80 per cent and people displaced around the world by 45 per cent.

Mack ascribes the sharp decline to the UN’s conflict resolution and peacekeeping efforts in the aftermath of the Cold War. He says that despite the UN failures in Rwanda, Srebrenica and Somalia, the world body has a 40 to 60 per cent success rate in stopping conflicts.

Many security analysts and scholars have backed the HSC report. Austin Bay, a US strategic analyst, says: “The January 2005 Palestinian and Iraqi elections… were not the revolutions of generals with tanks and terrorists with fatwas (Islamic religious decrees), but the slow revolutions of the ballot box… These revolts were the beginning of democratic politics, where ‘jaw jaw’ begins to replace ‘war war’ and ‘terror terror’…”

Both security reports, however, agree that despite a significant decrease in conflicts, international terrorism appears to be getting worse. But the HSC report argues that the death toll resulted from international terrorism is exaggerated.

“Like genocide, terrorism is directed primarily against civil­ians. But although the focus of enormous attention, inter­national terrorism has killed fewer than 1,000 people a year, on average, over the past 30 years.”

Certain international groups and scholars, however, have contested the findings of the report. The International Crisis Group’s 2005 security report has shown that ten conflict situations around the globe had deteriorated, while only five had improved.

Roger, a professor at the University of Bradford’s Peace Studies Department, points out: “The HSC report is sufficiently reliable for us to conclude that there is less conflict than 10 years ago, but the problem is that we may be in a lull in violence made worse by the policies embedded in the war on terror being likely to set up extended conflicts, as we are seeing both in Afghanistan and Iraq and may shortly see in Iran.”

It appears that there is a general consensus that terrorism is the biggest threat to human security today. Although, as the report indicates, the number of conflicts and violence has decreased significantly, people almost everywhere fear threats posed by terrorist networks.

For more information and comments on HSC report, refer to the following link:
http://www.humansecuritycentre.org

Leave your comments about whether you agree with the report.