What are violent conflicts and war?

A very general definition that most scientists will probably agree on is the following: War is a dispute between two or more organised groups, fought with systematic violence that lasts for a longer period of time. In the early 19th and 20th century, war was an armed conflict that follows the formal declaration of war by a state against another and that was decided in a final battle: the victor was able to enforce his will against the looser.

Today, there is hardly any formal declaration of war. Indeed, states are often involved, but are rarely the only relevant violent actors. And indeed, in some present day wars no state actor is directly involved and violent conflicts disregard any geographical and chronological boundaries. Today, so-called asymmetric wars, which are violent conflicts between two radically unequal opponents (unequal in the sense of their capacities and resources) are becoming more and more prominent.


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Data tables

For some select map layers, the information portal ‘War and Peace’ provides the user with all used data sets as tables.

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Country portraits

In the country reports, data and information are collected by country and put into tables that are used in the modules as a basis for maps and illustrations.

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Navigation and operation

The information and data of each module are primarily made available as selectable map layers and are complemented by texts and graphs. The map layers can be found on the right hand side and are listed according to themes and sub-themes.

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