Ongoing Wars and Conflicts in the World Today

It is sad to say, but there are currently ongoing wars or minor conflicts in around three dozen countries, most of them in the Middle East, North West Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, and a major ongoing drug-war in Mexico.

Wikipedia lists around 40 ongoing wars and conflicts with over 100 combat deaths in 2020 or 2021. NB Wikipedia is a useful starting point for this topic as it provides us with a statistical and historical overview which is relatively easy to understand, but keep in mind that you’ll need to verify sources and check up on how valid the data is!.

Map of Conflicts in the world today

Categorising Wars and Conflicts…

Wikipedia categorises ongoing conflicts as follows:

• Major wars, with over 10 000 direct conflict deaths in the current or previous year – there are three of these: in Afghanistan, Yemen and the Tigray conflict in Sudan/ Ethiopia.
• Minor wars, with 1000 to 9999 deaths in the current or past year – there are around 12 of these.
• Minor Conflicts, with 100 to 999 deaths in the current or past year – around a further two dozen fall into this category.
• They also list ‘minor skirmishes’ which have resulted in 1 to 99 deaths.

A point of note is that the Mexican Drug War actually had the highest death toll in 2020 – with over 50 000 deaths, but it’s not classified as a ‘major war’ because most of those deaths are murders rather than as a result of direct armed conflict between the drugs gangs and the Mexican armed forces.

Examples of recent and ongoing conflicts (list taken from Wiki)

Conflict	Death Toll	Years	Combatants	Countries
Rwandan genocide	800,000	April–July 1994	Hutu people vs. Tutsi Rebels	Rwanda
First Congo War	250,000–800,000	1996–1997	Zaire and allies vs. AFDL and allies	Congo
Second Congo War	2,500,000–5,400,000	1998–2003	See Second Congo War	Central Africa
Ituri conflict	60,000+	1999–2003	Lendu Tribe vs. Hemu Tribe and allies	Congo
War on Terror	272,000–1,260,000	2001–present	Anti-Terrorist Forces vs. Terrorist groups	Worldwide
War in Afghanistan	47,000–62,000	2001–present	see War in Afghanistan (2001–present)	Afghanistan
Iraq War	405,000–654,965	2003–2011	See Iraq War	Iraq
War in Darfur	300,000+	2003–present	SRF and allies vs. Sudan and allies vs. UNAMID	Sudan
Kivu Conflict	100,000+	2004–present	see Kivu Conflict	Congo
War in North-West Pakistan	45,900–79,000	2004–2017	Pakistan, USA, and UK vs. Terrorist groups	Pakistan
Mexican Drug War	150,000–250,000	2006–present	Mexico vs. Drug cartels	Mexico
Boko Haram insurgency	51,567+	2009–present	Multinational Joint Task Force vs. Boko Haram	Nigeria
Syrian Civil War	387,000–593,000+	2011–present	Syrian Arab Republic vs. Republic of Syria vs. ISIL vs. Syrian Democratic Forces	Syria
Rojava-Islamist conflict	50,000+	2013-present	Syrian Democratico Forces vs. Islamic States of Iraq and Levant vs. al-Nusra Front	Syria
Iraqi Civil War (2014–2017)	195,000–200,000+	2014–2017	Iraq and allies vs. ISIL	Iraq
Yemeni Civil War	233,000+	2014–present	Yemen’s Supreme Political Council vs. Hadi Government and Saudi-led Coalition	Yemen

It would be worth spending some time exploring some of these conflicts to get a feel for their differences and similarities.

But even if you don’t do any ‘deeper digging’ just a quick skim through Wiki’s list of ongoing conflicts can be informative – it shows you that MOST contemporary high death toll conflicts occur in developing countries, mostly in the middle east and Sub-Saharan Africa, and it also shows you just you that some countries have suffered ongoing or successive conflicts for several years – we see this in the Congo, and in Iraq and Syria.

Wikipedia also looks at conflict deaths by country from 2016 to 2020 – Mexico tops the list in 2020, and this along with Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Nigeria have had particularly high levels of conflict deaths over the past 5 years.

Signposting and related posts

This post has been written mainly for students studying A-level sociology (AQA focus).

War and Conflict is a topic within the optional second year Global Development Module.

Other related posts you should read alongside this one include:

• The role of developed countries in war and conflict – it is important to realise that conflicts are not just something which occur in poor countries!
• How war and conflict prevent development – war is almost certainly the main factor which retards social and economic development – it has some pretty dire short and long term consequences for positive development.

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Sources/ find out more

(1) Nice info map graphic – By Futuretrillionaire, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22118731