III. Human security and insecurity

Chapter:

1. Introduction: International stability and human security in 2017

Source:

SIPRI Yearbook 2018

Author(s):

Dan Smith

The broad trend so far this decade is an increase in armed conflicts, with the number each year returning to the levels of the start of the 1990s as the cold war was coming to an end.⁷¹ There has been some progress. In Colombia, for example, the 2016 peace agreement has held, despite concerns in the border areas with Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.⁷² Similarly, peacebuilding has continued in Nepal.⁷³ But a scan of some of the main armed conflicts reveals both their intractability and their human costs, which fall primarily on civilian populations.⁷⁴ During this decade, the number of civilian deaths in violent conflicts has doubled, as has the number of deaths resulting from combat, which are as always compounded by the indirect lethal effects of conflict in the form of malnutrition and famine, contamination of water supplies, and the collapse of health services in conflict countries.⁷⁵ The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 28 300 people each day are forced to flee their homes because of violent conflict and persecution. The world total of forcibly displaced people is over 65 million and has been climbing sharply in recent years, driven primarily by the effects of violent conflict.⁷⁶