A new study has found that there were more state conflicts in 2025 than at any other time since World War II. The annual “Conflict Trends” report from the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) recorded 65 conflicts involving at least one state worldwide last year, the highest number since 1946.
The report also found that 2025 was the third deadliest year for conflict since the Cold War, with only 1994 and 2021 seeing more deaths. Researcher Siri Aas Rustad told reporters: “Usually I’m able to sort of squeeze something positive out of it, but this year it’s shocking, the numbers.”
The number of conflicts between two states hit a new 80-year peak, doubling from four in 2024 to eight in 2025. These include clashes between India and Pakistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Cambodia and Thailand, as well as Russia’s ongoing invasion of neighboring Ukraine.
Some 35 countries were involved in fighting, but less than half of them had only one conflict. Israel, for example, was simultaneously party to multiple different conflicts — in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The report stated: “This trend points to a growing complexity in conflict dynamics, with more actors involved, which has important implications for how we analyze and respond to conflict.”
Africa was the continent most affected by state-based conflict, followed by Asia, the Middle East, the Americas and Europe. The PRIO research is based on figures compiled by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) at Uppsala University in Norway.
The report found there were 75 non-state conflicts in 2025, a slight decline from 79 in 2024. It noted a particularly notable drop in lethal violence between Mexican drug cartels last year.
According to the report, some 245,000 people were killed in battle-related deaths in 2025, making it the third most deadly year in the post-Cold War era. This was mainly driven by Russia’s war in Ukraine, the violence in Sudan and Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza.
Nearly 76,500 of the battle-related deaths were attributed to attacks directly targeting civilians — a dramatic increase from 14,200 in 2024. Only 1994 (the Rwandan genocide) and 2021 (the civil war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region) were more deadly.
The PRIO report said there were more deaths due to fighting in the past five years than in the entire two decades prior to 2021. Rustad added: “What has happened in the past five or six years is that we have several big conflicts going on at the same time and they seem to take over from each other. The world doesn’t get any break.”
Source: www.dw.com