War on the decline worldwide - thanks to UN, end of Cold War

War on the Decline Worldwide - Report

Haider Rizvi, OneWorld US
Fri Oct 21

UNITED NATIONS - With images of terrorism and armed conflicts broadcast across the world's televisions and newspapers everyday, many may believe that the world is more dangerous and insecure than ever before, but a new study suggests otherwise.

Since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, there has been a "major decline" in armed conflicts, genocides, human rights abuses, military coups, and international crises, according to the study, "Human Security Report 2005," which was presented here Monday.

Authors of the report, who spent three years researching and analyzing, point out that in the past 13 years the world has seen a dramatic change in the numbers of armed conflicts. More than 40 percent of all conflicts have come to an end, and there has been an 80 percent decline in the number of deadliest conflicts--those with 1,000 or more battle deaths.

"We knew that the number of wars was coming down," said Andrew Mack, who directed the study at the Human Security Center at the University of British Columbia, "because that has been around in academic circles for a while, but particularly surprising is how the decline in war is reflected right across the board in all forms of political violence and conflict."

Mack and his colleagues did note, however, that some 80 armed conflicts continue to rage around the world, many of which resulting in gross violations of human rights, widespread war crimes, and acts of terrorism.

"The wars that dominated the headlines in the 1990s were real--and brutal enough," the study says. "But the global media have largely ignored the 100-odd conflicts that have quietly ended since 1988. During this time there were more wars stopped than started."

Describing these changes as "extraordinary," Mack noted that they drew the attention of only a few scholars.

"No international agency collects data on wars, genocide, terrorist acts, or core human rights abuses," he said. [..]

Sponsored by the governments of Canada, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.K., the study says one of the major reasons for the decline in the number of armed conflicts is the end of colonialism that started in the early 1950s and reached its culmination point in the 1980s. It refers to the end of the Cold War between Washington and Moscow as another chief factor responsible for bringing the number of conflicts down.

In addition, authors of the study see peace-building efforts by the United Nations as a driving force behind stopping a number of deadly conflicts around the world. The number of UN "preventive diplomacy" missions and government-based "contact groups" aimed at resolving conflicts has risen sharply in the last decade, they say.

Currently, there are 16 UN peacekeeping operations, with about 17,000 troops ranging from Lebanon and Georgia to Haiti and Sierra Leone. The cost of all these missions combined amounted to nearly $4 billion in 2004-2005.

The study estimates that the annual cost of UN peacekeeping is less than what the U.S. is spending in Iraq in a single month. The U.S. military budget for this year is about $421 billion, and it plans to spend over $2 trillion over the next five years.

By contrast, the combined military budget of Russia, China, Britain, and Japan stood at $91 billion in 2003.

[The researchers described] international terrorism as "the only form of political violence that appears to be getting worse" [..], adding [..] that "some data sets" suggest a dramatic increase in the number of high-casualty attacks since September 2001.

The study says today's wars kill relatively fewer people as compared to the major wars of the Cold War era, when huge armies would use heavy conventional weapons, killing hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions.

In addition to low-intensity conflicts, a small number of "high-tech" wars have been fought by the U.S. and its allies since the end of the Cold War, the authors said, noting that the huge military advantage enjoyed by the Coalition forces in Iraq meant swift victory on the battlefield with relatively few deaths. "The current conflict in Iraq is the exception," they added. "While the conventional war that began in 2003 was over quickly and with relatively few casualties, tens of thousands have been killed in the subsequent--and ongoing--urban insurgency."

Authors also attribute the decline in the overall battle-death toll to the huge increase in the number of refugees and internally displaced people in the 1980s.

Had these millions not fled their homes, hundreds of thousands, possibly more, could have been killed, the study says, adding, "so, the increase in displacement is one of the reasons for the decline in battle-deaths."

In a concluding note on their findings, the authors urge the international community to realize that with additional resources, appropriate mandate, and greater commitment, "far more" can be achieved in preventing conflicts.

"While there is no room for complacency, nor is there any cause for pessimism," they say.