The world witnessed the highest number of state conflicts since World War II in 2025, according to a Norwegian study. The report by the Peace Research Institute Oslo recorded 65 conflicts involving at least one state worldwide, a new high since 1946.
Conflicts between states also reached an 80-year peak, doubling from the previous year to eight, including border clashes between India and Pakistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Cambodia and Thailand, as well as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Israeli military operations against Syria.
Last year was the third deadliest since the end of the Cold War, with around 245,000 deaths directly related to fighting or political violence, nearly 76,500 of them attributed to attacks directly targeting civilians.
The sharp increase in civilian deaths is due to the conflict between the army and paramilitaries in Sudan, where the siege and massacres carried out in El-Fasher city in the Darfur region are estimated to have left some 60,000 people dead.
Africa remained the region most affected by the conflicts, followed by Asia, the Middle East, the Americas, and Europe.
