A report finds that wars are fewer and less deadly since the end of the Cold War.
The study was prepared by the Human Security Center at the University of British Columbia and funded by the governments of Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Britain and Canada.
Andrew Mack, a former U.N. official who prepared the report, said many of his findings contradict popular myths, for example that more civilians are killed than soldiers or that women are more likely to be victims, the BBC reported.
He found that the number of armed conflicts has dropped sharply in the 13 years since the Cold War ended, while the number of very deadly ones is down 80 percent.
Many recent conflicts have been civil wars that involve weak governments opposed by badly trained and equipped rebels.
"Although often brutal, they kill relatively few people," the report says.
The Iraqi conflict and the civil war in Sudan's Darfur region were not included in the report. But Mack said that Iraq, at least, does not undermine his point. He said that about 60,000 people have been killed there in a year, contrasting it to the 500,000 people killed in conflicts in 1950 at the height of the Korean War.
© Copyright 2005 by United Press International
