Deaths in armed conflicts based on where they occurred

Description: Best estimate of the number of deaths of combatants and civilians due to fighting in interstate, intrastate, extrasystemic, non-state conflicts, and one-sided violence that were ongoing that year.
Data source: Uppsala Conflict Data Program (2026); geoBoundaries (2023) – processed by Our World in Data
Unit: deaths
Date range: 1989-2026
Last updated: 2026-08-03
Next expected update: 2026-11-01
Managed by: Lucas Rodés-Guirao

An armed conflict is defined by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) as a disagreement between organized groups, or between one organized group and civilians, that causes at least 25 deaths during a year. This includes combatant and civilian deaths due to fighting.
This includes interstate conflicts, civil conflicts, non-state conflicts, violence against civilians, and colonial conflicts.
UCDP identifies conflict deaths based on news reports, other contemporary sources, and academic research.

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UCDP's data for 2026 is preliminary. This means the number of deaths may be too low because more information becomes available later, or they may be too high because some events are later found not to be part of an armed conflict. In addition, data for 2026 only covers the first half of the year. We still show this data to provide more up-to-date information, but figures on this chart may change in the future if UCDP revises its estimates.
We use UCDP's quarterly Candidate Events Datasets for the preliminary data. We add data for the first quarter of the current year in May, for the second quarter in August, for the third quarter in November, and for the fourth quarter in February.
We show here the "best" death estimates as identified by UCDP. They also report high and low estimates.

Frequently asked questions

How did Our World in Data process this data?

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Notes on our processing step for this indicator

UCDP provides geographical coordinates of each conflict event. We have mapped these coordinates to countries by means of the geoBoundaries dataset.

In some instances, the event's coordinates fall within the borders of a country. Other times, the event's coordinates fall outside the borders of a country. In the latter case, we have mapped the event to the country that is closest to the event's coordinates.

Conflict event with id "53238" and relid "PAK-2003-1-345-88" was assigned to "Siachen-Saltoro" by geoBoundaries. We have mapped it to "Pakistan" following the text in the where_description field from the UCDP data, which refers to "Giang sector in Siachen, Pakistani Kashmir".

Data sources

Uppsala Conflict Data Program – Georeferenced Event Dataset

This dataset is UCDP's most disaggregated dataset, covering individual events of organized violence (phenomena of lethal violence occurring at a given time and place). These events are sufficiently fine-grained to be geo-coded down to the level of individual villages, with temporal durations disaggregated to single, individual days.

You can find more notes at https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/ged/ged261.pdf

Retrieved on

June 10, 2026

Retrieved from

https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/index.html#ged_global

Citation

This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data.

Davies, S., Pettersson, T., & Öberg, M. (2026). Organized violence 1989–2025, and violent political protests. Journal of Peace Research. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopres/xjag046
Sundberg, Ralph and Erik Melander (2013) Introducing the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset. Journal of Peace Research 50(4).

Uppsala Conflict Data Program – Candidate Events Dataset

The UCDP Candidate Events Dataset (UCDP Candidate) is based on UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset (UCDP GED), but published at a monthly release cycle. It makes available monthly releases of candidate events data with not more than a month's lag globally. See codebook for similarities and differences between the two products, as well as other relevant notes.

Retrieved on

August 3, 2026

Retrieved from

https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/index.html#candidate

Citation

This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data.

Hegre, Håvard, Mihai Croicu, Kristine Eck, and Stina Högbladh, July 2020. "Introducing the UCDP Candidate Events Dataset", Research & Politics doi:10.1177/2053168020935257
Högbladh Stina, 2026, "UCDP Candidate Events Dataset Codebook, v.1.5", Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University.

geoBoundaries – geoBoundaries – Comprehensive Global Administrative Zones (CGAZ)

Built by the community and William & Mary geoLab, the geoBoundaries Global Database of Political Administrative Boundaries Database is an online, open license (CC BY 4.0 / ODbL) resource of information on administrative boundaries (i.e., state, county) for every country in the world. Since 2016, they have tracked approximately 1 million boundaries within over 200 entities, including all UN member states.

Retrieved on

June 26, 2025

Retrieved from

https://www.geoboundaries.org/globalDownloads.html

Citation

This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data.

Runfola, Daniel, Community Contributors, and [v4.0: Lindsey Rogers, Joshua Habib, Sidonie Horn, Sean Murphy, Dorian Miller, Hadley Day, Lydia Troup, Dominic Fornatora, Natalie Spage, Kristina Pupkiewicz, Michael Roth, Carolina Rivera, Charlie Altman, Isabel Schruer, Tara McLaughlin, Russ Biddle, Renee Ritchey, Emily Topness, James Turner, Sam Updike, Helena Buckman, Neel Simpson, Jason Lin], [v2.0: Austin Anderson, Heather Baier, Matt Crittenden, Elizabeth Dowker, Sydney Fuhrig, Seth Goodman, Grace Grimsley, Rachel Layko, Graham Melville, Maddy Mulder, Rachel Oberman, Joshua Panganiban, Andrew Peck, Leigh Seitz, Sylvia Shea, Hannah Slevin, Rebecca Yougerman, Lauren Hobbs]. "geoBoundaries: A global database of political administrative boundaries." Plos one 15, no. 4 (2020): e0231866. Online at www.geoboundaries.org.

How to cite

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Deaths in armed conflicts based on where they occurred”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, and Max Roser (2024) - “War and Peace”. Data adapted from Uppsala Conflict Data Program, geoBoundaries. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261012-190130/grapher/deaths-in-armed-conflicts-by-country.html [online resource] (archived on October 12, 2026).

How to cite this data

If you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Uppsala Conflict Data Program (2026); geoBoundaries (2023) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Uppsala Conflict Data Program (2026); geoBoundaries (2023) – processed by Our World in Data. “Deaths in armed conflicts based on where they occurred – UCDP” [dataset]. Uppsala Conflict Data Program, “Georeferenced Event Dataset v26.1”; Uppsala Conflict Data Program, “Candidate Events Dataset v26.01.26.06”; geoBoundaries, “geoBoundaries – Comprehensive Global Administrative Zones (CGAZ) 6.0.0” [original data]. Retrieved October 12, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261012-190130/grapher/deaths-in-armed-conflicts-by-country.html (archived on October 12, 2026).

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All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

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