The Human Security Report Project (HSRP) is a peace and conflict studies research group. The Project is presently based at Simon Fraser University's School for International Studies at Harbour Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, [1] having formerly been based at the University of British Columbia's Liu Institute for Global Issues in the Human Security Centre.
The Project is known primarily for the Human Security Report 2005 , which provided evidence that, according to the Project's data and definitions, there had been a large decline in the number of wars, genocides, and international crises since the end of the Cold War. [2] [3] [4] The reduction in armed conflict in recent history has been referred to as the Long Peace, [5] [6] and there is general agreement among experts that the frequency of war has declined since at least the 1950s, [6] [7] despite a widespread misperception that the world has become more dangerous. [7] [8]
Subsequently, the Project published the Human Security Brief 2006, updating the core global trend data from the 2005 Report, and the Human Security Brief 2007. The 2007 Brief demonstrated that there had been a sharp decline in the incidence of terrorist violence (measured in terms of numbers of fatalities) around the world. If fatalities from political violence against civilians perpetrated by non-state groups in Iraq are counted as deaths from terrorism, the decline dated mid-2007. This claim was disputed in a press release from the University of Maryland's National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). [9] [10] However, START at that time only had incident data to 2004. Subsequent START reports confirmed the large decline in fatalities from terrorism in 2007. One problem with the START project's dataset is that it counts politically motivated killings of civilians in civil war by non-state actors as terrorism in some contexts, but not in others.[ citation needed ] In Iraq, for example, such killings are counted as acts of terrorism, but the very large number of comparable killings in Sub-Saharan Africa's civil wars in the 1990s are not. Subsequent to the publication of the 2007 Brief, the incidence of global terrorism has again increased, with most of the increase being in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Further, the 2007 Brief suggested positive change in Sub-Saharan Africa's security landscape; the number of conflicts being waged in the region more than halved between 1999 and 2006. [11]
In late October 2008, the Project published, in conjunction with the World Bank, the miniAtlas of Human Security. [12] This publication was produced in three languages and is an "at-a-glance guide to global security issues", using a selection of maps and graphics to illustrate security trends, and is part of the World Bank's miniAtlas series. [12] [13] There have been subsequent translations of the miniAtlas into Russian, Japanese, and Arabic.
In 2010, the Project launched the Human Security Report 2009/2010 at the United Nations. Part I of the Report examines "The Causes of Peace" since the end of World War II. Part II examines "The Shrinking Costs of War", paying particular attention to "indirect deaths" from war-exacerbated disease and malnutrition. Part III reviews recent trends in organized violence around the world. A hard copy version of the Report was published by Oxford University Press early in 2011. The text of the Report is freely available online at www.hsrgroup.org.
In addition to its publications, the Project runs several free e-services available in a number of delivery formats:
The Project works closely with a number of the world's leading research groups in peace and conflict studies, including: [14]
It has received funding from a number of governments, including:
The Project is a principal partner of the International Relations and Security Network.
Lack of robust conflict data remains a major problem with all attempts to track conflict numbers and fatality trends. The Uppsala Conflict Data Program's has an acknowledged tendency to undercount fatalities. [15] However, the tendency to undercount does not obscure trends, and both researchers and policymakers who focus on the causes of war and peace are more concerned with trends (are the number of wars/battle deaths increasing or decreasing) than in absolute numbers. For truth and reconciliation commissions, the reverse is true. There are various methodologies that can be used to estimate war deaths: incident-based reporting like that undertaken by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, nationwide retrospective mortality surveys like those undertaken in Iraq and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and censuses. Each has strengths and weaknesses. Uppsala's methodology is, however, the only one that permits timely annual updates for all conflict-affected countries. There are ongoing debates on the validity of data compiling and counting methodology. Part III of the Human Security Report 2009/2010 contains a discussion of these debates.
Estimates of the casualties from the Iraq War have come in several forms, and those estimates of different types of Iraq War casualties vary greatly.
Peace and conflict studies is a social science field that identifies and analyzes violent and nonviolent behaviours as well as the structural mechanisms attending conflicts, with a view towards understanding those processes which lead to a more desirable human condition. A variation on this, peace studies (irenology), is an interdisciplinary effort aiming at the prevention, de-escalation, and solution of conflicts by peaceful means, thereby seeking "victory" for all parties involved in the conflict.
The Human Security Report 2005 is a report outlining declining world trends of global violence from the early 1990s to 2003. The study reported major worldwide declines in the number of armed conflicts, genocides, military coups, and international crises, as well as in the number of battle-related deaths per armed conflict. Three years in the making and launched in 2005, the report was produced at the Human Security Centre at the University of British Columbia's Liu Institute for Global Issues by the Human Security Report Project (HSRP), which moved in May 2007 to join Simon Fraser University's School for International Studies. The Human Security Report covers similar ground to the long-running Peace and Conflict series.
Strategic Foresight Group (SFG) is a think tank based in India that works on global issues. It was established in 2002.
The Fund for Peace is an American non-profit, non-governmental research and educational institution. Founded in 1957, FFP "works to prevent violent conflict and promote sustainable security."
"Long Peace" is a term for the unprecedented historical period following the end of World War II in 1945 to the present day. The period of the Cold War (1945–1991) was marked by the absence of major wars between the great powers of the period, the United States and the Soviet Union. First recognized in 1986, the period of "relative peace" has been compared to the relatively-long stability of the Roman Empire, the Pax Romana, in Europe.
Global Peace Index (GPI) is a report produced by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) which measures the relative position of nations' and regions' peacefulness. The GPI ranks 172 independent states and territories according to their levels of peacefulness. In the past decade, the GPI has presented trends of increased global violence and less peacefulness.
Ted Robert Gurr was an American author and professor of political science who most notably wrote about political conflict and instability. His widely translated book Why Men Rebel (1970) emphasized the importance of social psychological factors and ideology as root sources of political violence. He was Distinguished University Professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and consulted on projects he established there. He died in November 2017.
The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) is a data collection program on organized violence, based at Uppsala University in Sweden. The UCDP is a leading provider of data on organized violence and armed conflict, and it is the oldest ongoing data collection project for civil war, with a history of almost 40 years. UCDP data are systematically collected and have global coverage, comparability across cases and countries, and long time series. Data are updated annually and are publicly available, free of charge. Furthermore, preliminary data on events of organized violence in Africa is released on a monthly basis.
The Naxalite–Maoist insurgency is an ongoing conflict between Maoist groups known as Naxalites or Naxals, and the Indian government. The insurgency started after the 2004 formation of the CPI-Maoists – a rebel group consisting of the PWG and the MCC. Their origin can be traced when the Communist Party of India (Marxist) split in 1967, leading to the creation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist). In January 2005, talks between the Andhra Pradesh state government and the CPI-Maoists broke down and the rebels accused authorities of not addressing their demands for a written truce, release of prisoners and redistribution of land. The ongoing conflict had taken place over a vast territory with hundreds of people being killed annually in clashes between the CPI-Maoists and the government every year since 2005.
In armed conflicts, the civilian casualty ratio is the ratio of civilian casualties to combatant casualties, or total casualties. The measurement can apply either to casualties inflicted by or to a particular belligerent, casualties inflicted in one aspect or arena of a conflict or to casualties in the conflict as a whole. Casualties usually refer to both dead and injured. In some calculations, deaths resulting from famine and epidemics are included.
Political violence is violence which is perpetrated by people or governments in order to achieve political goals. It can include violence which is used by a state against other states (war) or it can describe violence which is used against non-state actors. It can also describe politically-motivated violence which is used by non-state actors against a state or it can describe violence which is used against other non-state actors. Non-action on the part of a government can also be characterized as a form of political violence, such as refusing to alleviate famine or otherwise denying resources to politically identifiable groups within their territory.
The Global Terrorism Index (GTI) is a report published annually by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), and was developed by IT entrepreneur and IEP's founder Steve Killelea. The index provides a comprehensive summary of the key global trends and patterns in terrorism since 2000. It is an attempt to systematically rank the nations of the world according to terrorist activity. The index combines a number of factors associated with terrorist attacks to build an explicit picture of the impact of terrorism, illustrating trends, and providing a data series for analysis by researchers and policymakers. It produces a composite score in order to provide an ordinal ranking of countries on the impact of terrorism.
Violent extremism is a form of extremism that condones and enacts violence with ideological or deliberate intent, such as religious or political violence. Violent extremist views can manifest in connection with a range of issues, including politics, religion and gender relations. Though "radicalization" is a contested term, its general use has come to regard the process by which an individual or group adopts violence as a desirable and legitimate means of action. Extremist thought that does not condone the exercise of violence may be accepted within society, and be promoted by groups working within the boundaries of legally permitted activity. The term "violent extremism" may also occur as a code name for Islamic terrorism.
The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) is a database of incidents of terrorism from 1970 onward. As of July 2017, the list extended through 2016, with an incomplete data of 1993 due to issues with that year. The database is maintained by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, College Park in the United States. It is also the basis for other terrorism-related measures, such as the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) published by the Institute for Economics and Peace.
The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) is a non-governmental organization specializing in disaggregated conflict data collection, analysis, and crisis mapping. ACLED codes the dates and locations of all reported political violence and demonstration events in over 150 countries in real-time. As of 2020, ACLED has recorded almost a million individual events across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America & the Caribbean, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia & the Caucasus, and Southeastern & Eastern Europe & the Balkans. The ACLED team conducts analysis to describe, explore, and test conflict scenarios, making both data and analysis open for use by the public.
Rare or extreme events are events that occur with low frequency, and often refers to infrequent events that have widespread impact and which might destabilize systems. Rare events encompass natural phenomena, anthropogenic hazards, as well as phenomena for which natural and anthropogenic factors interact in complex ways.