Deaths in state-based conflicts by region
What you should know about this indicator
- A conflict involving a state is defined by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) as a conflict between two armed groups, at least one of which is a state, that causes at least 25 deaths during a year. This includes combatant and civilian deaths due to fighting.
- This includes interstate conflicts, civil conflicts, and colonial conflicts.
- UCDP and PRIO identify conflict deaths based on news reports, other contemporary sources, and academic research.
- PRIO's conflict-level data cannot be neatly mapped to individual countries, which is why we only present aggregated data for the world and world regions.
- We show here the "best" death estimates as identified by UCDP and PRIO. They also report high and low estimates.
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Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in 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.
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
Data prior to 1989 is sourced from PRIO. Data since 1989 is sourced from UCDP.
For conflict years without a best deaths estimate in the PRIO data, we conservatively coded the low estimate.
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Citations
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 state-based conflicts by region”, 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, Peace Research Institute Oslo. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/deaths-in-state-based-conflicts-by-region.html [online resource] (archived on March 4, 2026).How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
Uppsala Conflict Data Program (2025); geoBoundaries (2023); Peace Research Institute Oslo (2017) – processed by Our World in DataFull citation
Uppsala Conflict Data Program (2025); geoBoundaries (2023); Peace Research Institute Oslo (2017) – processed by Our World in Data. “Deaths in state-based conflicts by region” [dataset]. Uppsala Conflict Data Program, “Georeferenced Event Dataset v25.1”; geoBoundaries, “geoBoundaries - Comprehensive Global Administrative Zones (CGAZ) 6.0.0”; Peace Research Institute Oslo, “Battle deaths v3.1” [original data]. Retrieved March 31, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/deaths-in-state-based-conflicts-by-region.html (archived on March 4, 2026).Download
Quick download
Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.
Data API
Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.
Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-state-based-conflicts-by-region.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseMetadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-state-based-conflicts-by-region.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseExcel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-state-based-conflicts-by-region.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests
# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-state-based-conflicts-by-region.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})
# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-state-based-conflicts-by-region.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()R
library(jsonlite)
# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-state-based-conflicts-by-region.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-state-based-conflicts-by-region.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-state-based-conflicts-by-region.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear