Thursday, April 05, 2007

The Trend of Decline in Armed Conflicts Around the World Continues...

Last April, I wrote about the Human Security Centre's Human Security Report; now, the Human Security Brief for 2006 has been released. And, despite the current struggles in the world against Islamic terror (including the ongoing suffering in Rwanda and the Sudan), and in spite of the negativity of sensationalistic if-it-bleeds-it-leads brand of news reporting, the downward trend in organized armed conflict appears to have continued:
The Human Security Brief 2006 updates the 2005 Human Security Report's conflict trend data and analyzes the findings of two recently released datasets that track trends in war terminations and organized violence against civilians.

The new data indicate that the post-Cold War decline in armed conflicts and related fatalities reported last year has continued, with Sub-Saharan Africa seeing the greatest decrease in political violence.

Other encouraging trends include continuing declines in the number of genocides and other mass slaughters of civilians, and a drop in refugee numbers and military coups.

But some of the other findings are far from positive. Four of the world's six regions have experienced increased numbers of conflicts since 2002 [um....Baghdad?] the last five years have seen a huge spike in the estimated death toll from terrorism, while negotiated settlements, which are responsible for an increasing proportion of conflict terminations, have worryingly high failure rates.
The last paragraph doesn't shake my belief that our direct engagement with Islamic terrorism has been necessary, and has been the right course to take. Things always get worse before they get better; and by bringing the War to the terrorists, we are merely smoking out the cancer cells that would otherwise still be festering like a malignant tumor upon the free world, smouldering and metasticizing in the shadows.

Read the full report

Labels: , , , ,

13 Comments:

Blogger Mike's America said...

Is it safe to come back in the water? Are the sharks of moral equivalence/moral inversion at bay?

Thursday, April 05, 2007 12:06:00 PM  
Blogger The WordSmith from Nantucket said...

Geez..way to steer and derail this comments thread off-topic, right off the bat! Lol.

I'm sure there are still sharks in the water, Mike. Just bring your repellent, and I'm sure you'll be fine. You do know how to swim, right?

Thursday, April 05, 2007 12:29:00 PM  
Blogger Gayle said...

The trend of decline in armed conflicts continues? Good to hear it. I always love good news, Wordsmith.

Sorry, but off topic, I have a question: Does shark repellent really work? I mean, I haven't even been able to find a mosquito repellent that really works.

Thursday, April 05, 2007 2:30:00 PM  
Blogger Always On Watch said...

Here's another thing, from this source:

Now that the Democrat controlled House Armed Services Committee has decided to stop using the term “global war on terror” and ‘a long war”, they have successfully completed their ‘heads in the sand’ approach to the global threat facing us by taking a page out of the Harry Potter books. The clash between the civilized world and the Islamists or Islamo-fascists or whatever you want to call them is now ‘The-War-That-Must-Not-Be-Named’...

On we go, down the primrose path.

Thursday, April 05, 2007 6:27:00 PM  
Blogger The WordSmith from Nantucket said...

gayle,

I don't know about the repellent question.

The study is really quite interesting. Either side of the political aisle could find nuggets in it, to support an argument.

Thursday, April 05, 2007 11:26:00 PM  
Blogger MDConservative said...

"On we go, down the primrose path."

AOW2,
They accuse the right of reporting things through rose lenses. Huh, now insisting that we not accept the dangers in the world that exist... who is really seeing the world through a rose lens?

Friday, April 06, 2007 8:23:00 AM  
Blogger Mike's America said...

Gayle: Didn't they demonstrate some electrical do hickey that you charge into the water and the sharks take off?

Makes me nervous swimming in the waters around here. We haven't had any shark attacks, but you can walk along the water and just look at all the little baracuda minnows.

They grow up to be BIG barracudas. A few years back one jumped out of the water and speared a man in a boat.

Friday, April 06, 2007 8:31:00 AM  
Blogger Gayle said...

LOL Wordsmith! My sincerest apologies; I seem to have led Mike a bit off topic.

Friday, April 06, 2007 11:47:00 AM  
Blogger SkyePuppy said...

Mike,

I thought that was a swordfish that speared a guy.

Friday, April 06, 2007 1:28:00 PM  
Blogger SkyePuppy said...

WordSmith,

Excellent concluding paragraph!

The terrorists--er, freedom fighters... er, other-religioned, disaffected youths that must not be named--really are a cancer.

Friday, April 06, 2007 1:32:00 PM  
Blogger Marie's Two Cents said...

So my Two Cent's on this is since we have taken the fight to the enemy the entire world seems to have calmed down and clammed up for a bit and are watching us work?

Be nice to have a bit more help, but if the Global battles around the World have decreased maybe, just maybe, we should get a little credit for this?

Either way it's nice that the rest of the World has shut up for a bit.

Friday, April 06, 2007 1:48:00 PM  
Blogger The WordSmith from Nantucket said...

Well,

I wish It were that simple, Maria. But frankly, it's much more complex than that; and some of the analysis can definitely be used as political fodder to illustrate that we are on the wrong track; and there'd be even less violence, if it weren't for the current hardline stance we took against Islamic terrorism.

What I liked about the report, is that it contradicts the anecdotal belief that the apocalypse is at hand.

There's a book called "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse". It's also an interesting read. I guess there's a sort of tendency to believe that things were better "in the old days"; that our parents had it better; and our grandparents, and so on. We tend to romanticize the past. But the quality of life for the whole world is so much better, overall and in general, than at any other time in history.

Friday, April 06, 2007 2:16:00 PM  
Blogger Mike's America said...

Skye Puppy:

It was a baracuda here. I think that swordfish thing was more recent, but elsewhere.

Saturday, April 07, 2007 9:31:00 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home


Day By Day© by Chris Muir.

© Copyright, Sparks from the Anvil, All Rights Reserved