Amnesty International (AI) was founded in 1961. The international institution hires for the worldwide approval of articles 18 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the annual report Amnesty International examines the worldwide situation of human rights and offers detailed information for different countries regarding this topic. It is mentioned in which countries torture took place, but not of which it was arranged or executed. Amnesty International defines torture as it is mentioned in the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of 1984.

Links:

• Amnesty International - Report 2017/2018

The data are mostly based on the book „Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict, Global Overview and Implications for the Security Sector“ by Megan Bastick, Karin Grimm and Rahel Kunz. BICC has complemented and updated the data on wartime rape from other sources. Due to the difficulty of obtaining reliable data on the use of sexual violence (rape) in wars and conflicts, this data set does not claim to be complete.

Links:

• Bastick, Megan; Karin Grimm and Rahel Kunz (2007): Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict, Global Overview and Implications for the Security Sector. Geneva: Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF).

The CSP runs the Polity IV project, which codes political systems of countries with an index value between -10 and 10 for the years 1800 to 2017. Values between -10 and 6 represent autocracies, values between -5 and 5 for anocracies, and values higher than 6 represent democracies. The index value is calculated from six components, one of which is the selection of the executive officers or political competition.

Links:

• CSP - Data

The Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights dataset documents how states deal with human rights, how they adhere to and disregard 15 different human rights worldwide for 1981 to 2011. Based on the reports of the US State Department and Amnesty International, CIRI codes the occurrence of torture in three categories. It records the country in which people are tortured rather than the state that tortured or ordered them to be tortured. Torture is defined as the intentional and targeted infliction of physical or psychological pain by state officials or civilian actors on state orders. As torture is not officially documented or cannot officially be inflicted, data can only be used as guiding values; there are no established data to back this up.

Links:

• [CIRI Human Rights Data Project] (http://www.humanrightsdata.com/p/data-documentation.html)

The Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights dataset documents how states deal with human rights, how they adhere to and disregard 15 different human rights worldwide for 1981 to 2011. It calculates the Physical Integrity Rights Index to be able to show data on the adherence to the right of physical integrity. Physical integrity is a human right and contains the absence of torture, extrajudicial killings, political imprisonment and the disappearances of unwanted persons. The values of the index range from 0 to 8, with 8 representing a total adherence of that human right and 0 represents no adherence to the right to physical integrity.

Links:

• CIRI Human Rights Data Project

The ETH has taken up the further development of the “Ethnic Power relations” dataset. It comprises all politically relevant ethnic main groups, differentiated between common linguistic, somatic and religious aspects, for 155 sovereign states from 1946 to 2017. Politically relevant means either that at least one actor active in political life (political organisation) claims to represent the political interests of an ethnic group or that members of single ethnic groups are systematically and purposefully discriminated against. The participation of ethnic groups are divided into those that participate in the political arena (monopoly, dominant, senior partner, junior partner) and those who do not (regional autonomy, powerless, discriminated).

Links:

• ETH - Ethnic Power Relations Core Dataset

• Vogt, Bormann, Rüegger, Cederman, Hunziker & Girardin (2015): "Integrating Data on Ethnicity, Geography, and Conflict: The Ethnic Power Relations Dataset Family." Journal of Conflict Resolution 59(7):1327-1342.

The Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict (SVAC) Data Set is the most current and complete data set presenting reports of conflict-related sexual violence perpetrated by armed forces (state armed forces, rebel groups or paramilitary forces) for 1989 to 2009. The data set contains information on incidences, group of perpetrators, victims, kind of sexual violence used, time and location of the reported incidences. The data for the SVAC data set have been supplied by the US State Department, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Links:

• SVAC Data

The data presented have been taken from the Natural Earth Dataset and from the GAUL Dataset (Global Administrative Unit Layers) of the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). BICC has checked both datasets for completeness, revised and adapted them. Territories marked are the often very small contested territories and countries affected by territorial disputes. As there are differences between these two datasets, the source is shown when clicking on the territories.

Links:

• Natural Earth

• GAUL

The PTS refers to extrajudicial killings, torture, abduction, political imprisonment and calculates its index on the basis of data from Amnesty International and the US State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. The index values are grouped in five classes: Class 1, with values up to 1 signifies that a country is free and only infrequently imprisons people due to their opinion. Class 5, with a value of 5 signifies that a state oppresses its entire population and heads of state do everything to promote their own ideological and/or private interests and goals. All data have to be understood as guiding values; the corresponding country reports are a more detailed source of information on the country.

Links:

• PTS - Data

The UCDP and PRIO annually publish the Armed Conflict Dataset, that contains latest information on conflicts per year. The underlying definition of war only recognises wars or conflicts in which at least one state is involved and which results in at least 25 battle-related deaths. They classify wars into extra state / extra systemic violent conflicts (state against non-state actor outside of existing borders), inter-state conflict (between two states) and intra-state (state against non-state actor within existing borders) and internationalised intra-state conflicts (state aided by other states against non-state actor within existing borders).

Links:

UCDP (Uppsala Conflict Data Program)

• Armed Conflict Dataset

PRIO (Peace Research Institute Oslo)

• Armed Conflict Dataset

Pettersson, Therése and Kristine Eck (2018) Organized violence, 1989-2017. Journal of Peace Research 55(4).

Gleditsch, Nils Petter, Peter Wallensteen, Mikael Eriksson, Margareta Sollenberg, and Håvard Strand (2002) Armed Conflict 1946-2001: A New Dataset. Journal of Peace Research 39(5).

The UCDP and PRIO annually publish the Armed Conflict Dataset. This is used to count the participation of countries that have been directly involved in conflicts. The underlying definition only considers wars and conflicts in which at least one party to the conflict is a state, and the conflict results in at least 25 battle-related deaths.

Links:

UCDP (Uppsala Conflict Data Program)

• Armed Conflict Dataset

PRIO (Peace Research Institute Oslo)

• Armed Conflict Dataset

The UCDP annually publishes the Georeferenced Event Dataset that contains detailed information on single organized violence events since 1989. Since the spatial and temporal resolution is very high, it can be used for extensive analyses. Besides information of the involved actors, numbers of victims are also mentioned for each event. Furthermore, the single events are linked to the other conflict datasets of UCDP.

Links:

• UCDP (Uppsala Conflict Data Program)

Sundberg, Ralph, and Erik Melander, 2013, “Introducing the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset”, Journal of Peace Research, vol.50, no.4, 523-532

The UCDP and PRIO annually publish the Armed Conflict Dataset and the Battle-Related Deaths Dataset. These have been combined to localise wars and conflict. The underlying definition of war only recognises wars or conflicts in which at least one state is involved and which results in at least 25 battle-related deaths. They classify wars into extra state / extra systemic violent conflicts (state against non-state actor outside of existing borders), inter-state conflict (between two states) and intra-state (state against non-state actor within existing borders) and internationalised intra-state conflicts (state aided by other states against non-state actor within existing borders).

Links:

UCDP (Uppsala Conflict Data Program)

• Armed Conflict Dataset

• Battle-Related Deaths Dataset

PRIO (Peace Research Institute Oslo)

• Armed Conflict Dataset

• Battle-Related Deaths Dataset

• Conflict Site Dataset

In 2015, UNODC published the "Global Study on Homicide" based on the "UNODC Homicide Statistics dataset" updated in 2013. In the publication, the data on violence and crime to 2012 are discussed. All country data have been collected by queries to the police of the individual countries and then harmonised. Gaps in the data are due to the transfer of information of single countries with the respective data collection by the police and reports of citizens.

Links:

• UNODC - Statistics Online

Since 1990, the UNDP publishes the annual Human Development Index (HDI). This is used as a global indicator of wealth and shows ‘differences in development.’ The Index is made up of various dimensions of human development: life expectancy, years of schooling and further education, education index and the gross national income. According to their index value, countries are assigned to one of the four classes: Very highly developed countries, highly developed countries, countries with medium human development, and countries with low human development.

Links:

• UNDP - HDI Data