Uppsala Conflict Data Program

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) is a data collection project on organized violence housed at Uppsala University in Sweden. The program aims to gather information on armed conflict and make it publicly available online and in its annual report, “States in Armed Conflict.” The UCDP collects both quantitative and qualitative data on organized violence (e.g. fatality statistics, georeferenced event data, armed actor and conflict descriptions) that is used by social science researchers, journalists and policymakers.

Background
The UCDP began recording information on ongoing violent conflicts in the 1970s. It became clear that more systematic and global data on armed conflicts was necessary for conducting research in the expanding academic discipline of peace and conflict studies.

Initially the program collected data only on so-called “armed conflict”, defined as fighting exceeding 25 battle-related deaths between two actors of which at least one had to be a state. In later years the data gathering grew, and the program also began collecting data on “non-state conflicts” (where neither party was a state) and “one-sided violence” (where an organized group attacked unarmed civilians).

The UCDP’s data is published annually in such renowned publications as the SIPRI Yearbook Journal of Peace Research. The UCDP also makes its data publicly available through its website and in its annual publication, States in Armed Conflict.

Organization
The UCDP is located at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, at Uppsala University in Sweden. The program is led by the Dag Hammarskjöld Professor of Peace and Conflict Research, Peter Wallensteen, and employs approximately 15 research assistants and researchers. A number of scholars and Ph.D. candidates are also attached to the program and tasked with carrying out research for the collection of conflict data. In addition to collecting data the program disseminates knowledge on trends and dynamics of armed conflict to the public via lectures at academic and government forums.

Cooperation
The UCDP works closely with the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO) and the Human Security Report Project, based within the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The UCDP collaborates with PRIO to create its datasets and provides the Human Security Centre with data for its annual publication, the Human Security Report. The UCDP’s data is published annually in collaboration with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and appears in the SIPRI Yearbook.

Research
Hundreds of scholars have used the UCDP’s data for research. The UCDP couples data collection with research on conflict resolution and the dynamics of conflicts. Much of the research done by UCDP staff is published in the UCDP’s States in Armed Conflict annual report, the annual SIPRI Yearbook, and the Journal of Peace Research.

Publications
UCDP data has been published in the SIPRI Yearbook since 1988. Since 1993 a list of all armed conflicts also appears in the acclaimed Journal of Peace Research. Data on non-state conflicts appears in the Human Security Report from 2004. The UCDP also releases (annually) its own report, the States in Armed Conflict publication. UCDP data is also frequently used by journalists, government agencies and other organizations to produce overviews of peace and conflict in the world. One prominent index that uses UCDP data is the Global Peace Index.

The UCDP’s Definitions of Organized Violence
The program divides armed conflict into three categories: “state-based conflict”, “non-state conflict” and “one-sided violence”.

State-based conflict refers to what most people intuitively perceive as “war”; fighting either between two states, or between a state and a rebel group that challenges it. The UCDP defines an armed state-based conflict as: “An armed conflict is a contested incompatibility that concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in one calendar year”. The program’s definition differs somewhat from other data collection programs, such as the Correlates of War Project, which only counts conflicts where at least 1,000 deaths have been recorded during one calendar year. In UCDP data such an armed conflict is labelled as having the intensity level of “war”, whilst armed conflicts that reap between 25 and 999 battle-related deaths are seen as having the intensity of a “minor” armed conflict.

Non-state conflicts are those conflicts in which none of the warring parties is a state. Examples of non-state conflicts include, the Fatah-Hamas conflict of 2006 and 2007, inter-ethnic group conflicts such as the Lou Nuer – Murle conflict of 2009-2012, and inter-cartel violence in the Mexican Drug War.

One-sided violence is defined as: “The use of armed force by the government of a state or by a formally organized group against civilians which results in at least 25 deaths in a year”. Examples include the Governments of Sudan, Myanmar, and Syria against civilians as well as non-state organizations such as Los Zetas, Al Qaeda, and the Lord's Resistance Army against civilians.

List of state-based conflicts in 2011
In 2011 the UCDP reported 37 active state-based armed conflicts:

Europe • Russia (territory: Caucasus Emirate)

Middle East • Iran (government) • Iraq (government) • Israel (territory: Palestine) • Syria (government) • Turkey (territory: Kurdistan) • Yemen (government)

Asia • Afghanistan (government) • Cambodia, Thailand (territory: common border) • India (territory: Kashmir) • India (government) • Myanmar (territory: Karen) • Myanmar (territory: Kachin) • Myanmar (territory: Shan) • Pakistan (territory: Baluchistan) • Pakistan (government) • Philippines (territory: Mindanao) • Philippines (government) • Tajikistan (government) • Thailand (territory: Patani)

Africa • Algeria (government) • Central African Republic (government) • Ethiopia (territory: Ogaden) • Ethiopia (territory: Oromiya) • Ivory Coast (government) • Libya (government) • Mauritania (government) • Nigeria (government) • Rwanda (government) • Senegal (territory: Casamance) • Somalia (government) • Southern Sudan (government) • Sudan (government) • Sudan (territory: Abyei) • Uganda (government)

Americas • Colombia (government) • USA (government)

Out of these 37 armed conflicts a total of six (Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia and Sudan) reached the intensity level of “War”, meaning that more than 1,000 battle-related deaths were recorded in 2011. In 2012 six conflicts also reached the intensity level of “War.”


 * Note: Fatality figures may be substantially lower than other stated estimates as UCDP data does not include fatalities from disease and/or war-time epidemics, or combine casualty figures between different types of armed conflicts. Additionally the figures in the tables represent the UCDP's "best estimate" figures and not its "high estimate" figures.

Criticism
Edward Herman, Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and his colleague David Peterson, co-authors of The Politics of Genocide have accused the UCDP of using “politicized[...]methodologies” in an effort to “minimize U.S.- and Western-led warmaking and killing.” Exemplifying these assertions they compare the classification  of US involvement in Guatemala and the perception of Soviet involvement in Afghanistan by the program.

UCDP on the Internet
The UCDP’s homepage is located at http://www.ucdp.uu.se. The UCDP also has an on-line database of organised violence, accessible at http://www.ucdp.uu.se/gpdatabase/search.php. The database provides free information on state-based and non-state conflicts, as well as one-sided violence. It also includes descriptive information on causes and histories of conflicts and one-sided violence and brief descriptions of rebel groups, governments and related items.

UCDP for iPhone and Android
As of July 2010 the UCDP Conflict Database is available as an iPhone application and an Android application.