Blog post archive

Friday, 6 Mar 2020
Improved Data to Assist in the Prevention and Management of Conflicts

Today, the Praia City Group on Governance Statistics is launching its Handbook on Governance Statistics. The Praia Handbook on Governance Statistics provides improved data that can assist in the prevention and management of conflicts. What is the Handbook about? the … handbook is in itself nothing less than a historical ...

Wednesday, 14 Aug 2019
The First Steps in the PRIO-Uppsala Connection: Peter Wallensteen Interviewed by Siri Aas Rustad

Peter Wallensteen, interviewed by Siri Aas Rustad.

Wednesday, 1 Aug 2018
Producing Reliable Data for SDG 16: The Case of Conflict Data

In 2015, the United Nations stated unequivocally in the last progress report for the Millennium Development Goals that “conflict remains the largest obstacle to development”. Yet, reducing conflict and violence in the world was never a target in and of itself under the MDGs. This changed with the inclusion of Goal 16 ...

Tuesday, 15 Nov 2016
Democratic Intervention?

Donald Trump has made statements sceptical of military interventions in the Middle East. This is perhaps a rare piece of good news. Military intervention as a means of building democracy has once again become a hot topic. The Norwegian government has been criticized due to the consequences of the intervention ...

Monday, 14 Nov 2016
Myths About War and Violence

‘Calculations made by a former president of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, with the assistance of historians from a number of countries, show that since 3600 BC, the world has known only 292 years of peace. Since 650 BC, there have been 1,656 arms races. Sixteen of them ...

Thursday, 10 Nov 2016
The Victims of War: Light at the End of the Tunnel?

In making the choice between pessimism and optimism, it may be a risky business to lean on everyday news. Let us rather have a look at figures that reveal more long-term tendencies. Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature, published in 2011, painted an optimistic picture of mankind ...

Friday, 29 Apr 2016
Trends in Armed Conflict, 1946–2014

Headlines from battlefields in Syria, Libya​​, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine give the impression that the world is becoming ever more violent. Indeed, since 2013 the number of armed conflicts in the world and the number of battle deaths has risen. Fortunately, the long-term trends nevertheless driving the waning of war ...

Monday, 9 Feb 2015
Data Challenges in Conflict Research

Quality data is at the heart of quality research. The scholarly community depends on valid, reliable, and easily accessible data in order to empirically test our theories of social and political processes. Yet quantitative data is not “truth” in an absolute sense, but rather, is a numeric representation of complex ...