I. Tracking armed conflicts and peace processes in 2017

Chapter:

2. Armed conflicts and peace processes

Source:

SIPRI Yearbook 2018

Author(s):

Dan Smith

Contemporary armed conflicts tend to be concentrated in urban areas and to affect civilians: according to Action on Armed Violence, in the first 11 months of 2017 at least 15 399 civilians were killed by explosive weapons, the vast majority in cities, an increase of 42 per cent compared to 2016.¹ One important and new aspect of that data is that air strikes (and thus states) were responsible for over 50 per cent of the deaths from explosive weapons for the first time since such data has been recorded.² The use of explosive weapons in populated areas—especially explosive weapons with a large destructive radius, an inaccurate delivery system or the capacity to deliver multiple munitions over a wide area—is a growing concern and part of ongoing humanitarian arms control efforts.³ Accounting for civilian casualties in conflict continued to be controversial in 2017, with official estimates often under-reporting casualty numbers.⁴