The number of armed conflicts between states reached its highest level in 2025 since the end of World War II, eight decades ago, doubling compared to 2024, according to a report by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). The document also highlights that last year was the third deadliest since 1989, with 245,000 deaths from violence directly linked to combat.
The study, titled “Conflict Trends: A Global Review, 1946-2025,” recorded eight interstate conflicts in 2025: the war between Russia and Ukraine, the confrontation between India and Pakistan, clashes between Afghanistan and Pakistan, hostilities between Thailand and Cambodia, and several clashes between states related to the war in the Middle East, involving Israel, Iran, Yemen, and the United States.
“The resurgence of interstate conflicts on this scale is deeply concerning,” stated Siri Aas Rustad, research director at PRIO and lead author of the report, who emphasized that “for decades, civil wars dominated global conflicts.”
“We are now witnessing a dangerous resurgence of direct confrontations between states, driven by geopolitical rivalry, border disputes, and regional escalation, especially in the Middle East,” she indicated during the presentation of the report, which was prepared using data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP).
UCDP figures indicate that 245,000 people lost their lives in battle-related incidents, a number driven by three major wars: the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the conflict in Sudan—including the killings attributed to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in El Fasher, Darfur—and Israel’s bombings of the Gaza Strip.
PRIO emphasizes that high mortality levels are usually determined by a few large-scale conflicts. Before 2020, it was common for only one of these conflicts to be active at a time, whereas in recent years, a simultaneous accumulation of several high-intensity wars has been observed.
The jump in victims between 2024 and 2025 —from 188,000 to 245,000— is mainly explained by the escalation of violence in Sudan, where nearly 60,000 people were reportedly killed in the last week of October 2025 by the RSF in El Fasher, according to the UCDP. The data also shows that the death toll nearly doubled in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), mainly due to the offensive launched at the beginning of the year by the rebel group March 23 Movement (M23).
However, the report clarifies that the victim count only includes those who died in combat —both combatants and civilians killed in attacks or directly within the conflict— but excludes a “huge number” of people who die indirectly from the destruction of infrastructure, lack of health services, or food insecurity, as well as those who succumb later to their injuries.
For this reason, PRIO insists that, although the figures allow for measuring the intensity of conflicts, they are conservative estimates, especially because indirect deaths are very difficult to verify “due to the lack of reliable data” that would allow for an approximate calculation.
Record high of state conflicts
The report details that 2025 also registered the highest number of state conflicts since 1946, with 65 active wars —six more than the previous peak— and around 153,000 deaths, a figure only surpassed by those of 2021, 2022, and 2024. This data confirms a persistently high level of state violence, with more deaths in the last five years than in the two decades prior to 2021.
During 2025, these 65 conflicts were documented in 35 countries, representing an increase in both the number of wars and the number of affected states compared to 2024. In the last decade, the gap between the total number of conflicts and the number of countries at war has widened, indicating an increase in states hosting multiple simultaneous fronts —such as Burma, with five, and Israel, with two civil and three international conflicts—.
In the group of countries with multiple conflicts are also Afghanistan, Cameroon, Mali, Nigeria and Pakistan, with three each, while 16 of the 35 affected states register only one conflict. This situation “also reflects a growing complexity in conflict dynamics, with more actors involved,” states PRIO, which warns that this has “important implications for how these crises are analyzed and responded to.”
Rustad has emphasized that “conflicts today are increasingly interconnected” and has added that “they involve more actors, overlapping fronts, and greater regional spread.” “This makes them much more difficult to resolve and significantly raises the risk of wider regional wars,” he argued.
Slight decrease in non-state conflicts
In parallel, non-state conflicts experienced a slight decrease in 2025, to 75 compared to 79 the previous year, according to PRIO. The institute specifies that many of these clashes are “low-intensity,” which increases volatility in the annual number of conflicts, as numerous episodes erupt sporadically and do not last over time.
The death toll in this type of violence was around 14,500 people in 2025, continuing the downward trend that began in 2020. The drop is particularly notable in homicides linked to lethal violence between Mexican cartels. However, the number of victims remains at a level “substantially higher” than that recorded before 2013.
Africa consolidates itself as the continent with the most non-state conflicts, with 34 in total — fourteen of them in Nigeria, to which South Sudan and Ethiopia are added as other prominent hotspots. America occupies second place, with 32 conflicts of this type, concentrated mainly in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico.
To these figures are added 76,500 deaths from unilateral violence against civilians, mostly caused by non-state actors in Sudan, among whom the RSF stand out. This is the highest figure since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The number of actors involved in this type of violence rose to 55, another historic record. In addition, 5,900 people died at the hands of government forces.
Africa and the Middle East, hotspots of global violence
In this scenario, Africa remains the region with the most state and non-state conflicts in 2025, while the Middle East reached its all-time high in wars between states. Asia, for its part, reached its highest level of state violence since the mid-1990s.
The report emphasizes that the increase in violence is not limited to a single geographical area, but reflects a general deterioration of international security. “The data point to a world moving in the wrong direction: more wars, more internationalized conflicts, and a much higher human cost,” lamented Rustad.
Thus, PRIO concludes that “the level of violence is increasing and is now part of a longer trend and not a peak,” adding that “a new, higher baseline of global violence has emerged,” especially when considering that the period after 2013 has been bloodier than the previous one, including the Cold War.
“The growing number of international conflicts reflects increasing global tension. The growing complexity poses serious challenges for international and humanitarian actors, as in Sudan, making it increasingly difficult to navigate and operate in the context of conflict,” the document states.
