Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP)

12/06/2026

Working with data on war, conflict, and mass atrocities is meaningful and yet, psychologically demanding. At UCDP, we take that seriously.

During the preparations for new UCDP datasets this year, we held monthly wellbeing meetings guided by Karen Brounéus, Professor of Peace and Conflict Research and certified teacher of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR).

In those sessions, we explored topics that rarely get space in research teams: secondary traumatic stress and how it accumulates when you spend your days recording violence and death; the tension between scientific detachment and the emotional weight of knowing that every data point represents real human suffering; practical mindfulness techniques for staying grounded during intensive work periods; and how to build a team culture where it is genuinely okay to say “this is getting to me.”

Karen brought both clinical depth and firsthand understanding of conflict research to every session. The space she created was honest, safe, and quietly transformative.

Thank you,🙏

We believe this kind of structured meetings should be standard practice for any team working on large-scale data projects dealing with violence, suffering, or human loss. The data is about real people. So is the team collecting it.

If you are part of a similar project in Sweden, we encourage you to look into Karen’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Management course at Uppsala University:

We are happy to announce that in spring 2026, the free-standing course Mindfulness-Based Stress Management (7,5 hp)will be offered again, at the advanced level (180 credits). Please find the spring 2026 course details here.

11/06/2026

New UCDP datasets are also available through our API!

Version 26.1 is live across all core UCDP datasets, including a brand new addition: UCDP Organized Violence Country-Year Dataset, which provides country-year aggregations based on the UCDP GED, the most comprehensive structured event data on organized violence covering the period from 1989 till the end of 2025.

The full list of available datasets on our API:

UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset (GED)
UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset
UCDP Dyadic Dataset
UCDP Non-State Conflict Dataset
UCDP One-Sided Violence Dataset
UCDP Battle-Related Deaths Dataset
UCDP Organized Violence Country-Year Dataset: new

Our API returns structured JSON and supports filtering by country, year, actor, region, type of violence, and more.

Access is free. Request a token by contacting the API maintainer and briefly describing your research or intended use.

API documentation: https://ucdp.uu.se/apidocs/
Dataset downloads: https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) is the world's main provider of data on organized violence and the oldest ongoing data collection project for civil war, with a history of more than 40 years. Its definition of armed conflict has become the global standard for how conflicts are systematically...

09/06/2026

The datasets covering 2025 from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) have now been released. Here are some notable figures:

📊 The number of conflicts between two or more governments doubled for the second consecutive year, rising from two in 2023 to eight in 2025. This is the highest number recorded since UCDP's conflict data collection began in 1946.

📊 UCDP recorded 65 active conflicts involving at least one state, up from 61 the previous year, marking the highest number since the statistics began in 1946.

📊 UCDP data shows approximately 76,500 fatalities from one-sided violence, an increase of more than 400 per cent compared with the previous year. This is the highest level recorded since 1994 during the Rwandan genocide.

📊 Despite the increase in conflicts involving states, non-state conflicts continued to decline. Conflicts between non-state groups, such as drug cartels, caused approximately 14,500 fatalities, the lowest number since 2013.

🔗 Read more 👉 https://www.uu.se/en/news/2026/2026-06-09-ucdp-record-number-of-conflicts-between-states

🔗 The datasets are available through the UCDP website 👉
https://www.uu.se/en/department/peace-and-conflict-research/research/ucdp

🔗 A comprehensive analysis of the 2025 data is published in the Journal of Peace Research, https://doi.org/10.1093/jopres/xjag046

05/06/2026

17/11/2025

UCDP Research Coordinator Therese Pettersson has made this year’s Clarivate’s “Highly Cited Researchers” list, which covers the most cited researchers worldwide over the past decade. This is probably the first time a researcher from our department has managed this.

We congratulate Therese and the entire Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) team on this impressive achievement!

Swedish higher education institutions have 69 researchers on the list. Five of them are employed at Uppsala University. Out of the included Swedish researchers, six are in the social sciences.

25/08/2025

The Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, where we are based, is forced to rebuild its Facebook following from scratch.
Please help them find their previous audience as well as new audiences by liking and following. If you like our content, we think you will enjoy theirs too.

We’re back! Almost two years ago, our account was suddenly disabled. After two years of fruitless attempts to restore it, we’ve decided it’s time to start fresh.

On this channel, we will be sharing about our research, outreach and collaboration as well as our day-to-day at the department.
While going from 9k+ followers to zero feels tough, we are excited about what lies ahead. Your reactions and shares are especially valuable at this early stage of rebuilding – thank you for helping out.

If you are sceptical regarding the authenticity of this account (which you should be), please head to our website pcr.uu.se and navigate to the bottom of the page, where you can find links to all our social media channels, including this one.

24/07/2025

A new article by UCDP's Magnus Öberg and Mert Can Yilmaz in Research & Politics reveals that differences between major conflict datasets aren't driven by sourcing strategies or inclusion thresholds as previously claimed.

Some key findings:
- Most differences stem from how projects handle ambiguity & uncertainty in poor information environments.
- Auxiliary coding rules (e.g., counting "people killed" as 2 vs 10 fatalities) explain 90%+ of differences in some cases.
- Source evaluation standards matter more than sourcing strategies.
- Stable definitions are essential for reliable measurement, not a flaw.

Read the article:

Clionadh Raleigh, Roudabeh Kishi, and Andrew Linke recently compared their own Armed Conflict Location and Events Dataset (ACLED) to three other conflict event ...

23/06/2025

Want to know more about conflict deaths across the world? Our World in Data has now updated their visuals with the latest data from UCDP. https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace

19/06/2025

The war in Gaza features one of the highest civilian-to-combatant death ratios of any modern conflict. UCDP's Mert Can Yilmaz elaborates on this in Dagens Nyheter (in Swedish)

Sedan den 7 oktober 2023 har minst 29 000 civila dödats i väpnade attacker i Israel och de ockuperade palestinska områdena.

17/06/2025

New UCDP data release! In the 2024 update from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) organised violence remained alarmingly high, with 61 state-based conflicts and nearly 160,000 recorded fatalities.

The full analysis by Shawn Davies, Therése Pettersson, Margareta Sollenberg and Magnus Öberg (all Uppsala University) is open access in Journal of Peace Research – read it here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00223433251345636