Global Civil Society and the Prevention of Armed Conflict

Abstract

By the end of the 20^th century, the world was experiencing the longest period of uninterrupted peace between the traditional ‘great powers’ in hundreds of years. But from the beginning of the Cold War to the early 1990s, the number of armed conflicts in developing countries rose relentlessly. In 1992, the number of conflicts worldwide rose to a post-Second World War high, as a series of short-lived wars flared in the former Soviet Union. However, just as the Western media started to worry about a world-wide epidemic of ethnic violence, the number of armed conflicts began to drop rapidly (Human Security Centre 2005: 22). Today that decline continues. In 1992, more than 50 armed conflicts involving a government were being waged world-wide; by 2003 that number had dropped to 29. In the developing world, the end of the Cold War not only removed a major source of ideological polarisation but it also staunched the flow of resources to warring parties in the South, allowing the UN to begin to play the global security role that its founders had originally intended. Analysing the trends, Chart 2 reveals the global development in three types of armed conflict: inter-state, intra-state (civil wars) and extrastate (overwhelmingly colonial wars).