The world is experiencing its most conflict-ridden period since the end of World War II, according to a major new study released this week. The annual Conflict Trends report by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) recorded 65 state-based conflicts in 2025 — the highest number since records began in 1946 — while direct clashes between states doubled compared to the previous year, reaching eight, also an 80-year high. The findings, which draw on data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), a widely recognised international authority on organised violence, paint a stark picture of a world sliding deeper into sustained instability.

Approximately 245,000 people were killed in fighting or political violence in 2025, making it the third deadliest year since the end of the Cold War. More alarming still was the dramatic surge in civilian deaths: nearly 76,500 people were killed in attacks directly targeting civilians, compared to around 14,200 in 2024. Much of that increase was driven by the conflict in Sudan, where sieges and massacres in and around El-Fasher, in the Darfur region of the country's west, are estimated to have killed some 60,000 people. Only the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the 2021 war in Ethiopia's Tigray region produced higher death tolls in the post-Cold War era. State-based conflicts recorded in 2025 included renewed clashes between India and Pakistan, disputes along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, skirmishes on the Cambodia-Thailand frontier, Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine, and Israeli military operations in Syria near the Golan Heights.

Siri Aas Rustad, the lead researcher on the report, described the data as a rupture with previous trends.