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
Hello, correction on the conflict about Rwandan genocide,
Firstly, it is called 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and it was between Hutu people and Tutsi people not Tutsi rebels and people who are died are more than one million.
Take your time to make necessary changes to provide true information to your readers.
Fair point, it wasn’t my intention to cover everything, unfortunately there are so many conflicts today!
If Russia is invading Ukraine, which they are, why isn’t Russia shaded? What is happening in Ukraine is not an internal struggle.
This article forgets the recent Sri Lankan civil war which saw the genocide of Tamils and killing of over 300,000 Tamils by the Sri Lankan state throughout its history.