A total of 52 countries (55 in 2022) are facing ongoing armed conflicts. Wars are increasingly ferocious and deadly. The number of very high intensity wars and high intensity wars is increasing – from 3 to 4 and from 17 to 20 respectively – as is the number of deaths: 170,700, the highest number of deaths since 2019. A tragic record number of children were killed and maimed: 11,649 in 2023 – a 35% increase on the previous year. The number of children abducted also reached a new high: 4,356 in 2023, mostly boys. Global military spending peaked at $2,443 billion, and for the first time it increased across all continents (+6.8%). These are the highlights of Caritas Italy’s eighth Report on Forgotten Conflicts, edited by Paolo Beccegato and Walter Nanni, entitled “Return to Arms. Ongoing Wars”, published in collaboration with CSVnet, a national network of volunteering organisations. The volume (the first edition was published in 2002) was presented in Rome on Monday. It focuses on the extent to which wars feature prominently on the news agenda, with particular attention to humanitarian aspects and the link between war, the environment and the green transition.
Wars marked by increased viciousness and higher death tolls. According to SIPRI data, in 2023 there were four very high-intensity wars in the world, with more than 10,000 deaths (3 in 2022). These were: the Israel-Hamas conflict and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as well as the civil wars in Myanmar and Sudan. In contrast, there were 20 high-intensity wars, with between 1,000 and 9,999 deaths. There were 17 in 2022.
Worldwide, 170,700 people were killed in all armed conflicts (up from 153,100 in 2022), the highest death toll since 2019.
Fewer peacekeeping operations and peacekeepers. In 2023, 63 multilateral peace operations were active (down from 64 in 2022), a third of which were UN-coordinated, with 100 568 international personnel deployed to multilateral peace operations (as of December 2023). There were 114,984 in 2022.
Global military expenditure rose to an all-time high of $2,443 billion. For the first time since 2009
military expenditure increased on all continents: +6.8%,
amounting to 2.3% of global GDP, or $306 per capita. It was $820 billion (+2.3%) in the United States, $296 billion (+6%) in China and $109 billion in Russia.
A total of 11,649 children were killed or maimed in 2023. The UN Secretary-General Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC), recorded
32,990 grave violations committed against children in 25 national conflicts and the regional conflict in the Lake Chad Basin, the highest number since 2005.
These include: as many as 11,649 children were killed and maimed in 2023, representing a 35 percent increase and representing the highest violation verified; the recruitment and use of children in armed groups; sexual violence; abduction; attacks on schools and hospitals; denial of humanitarian access to children. The number of children abducted in armed conflicts also increased, hitting an all-time high for the third consecutive year: 4,356 children abducted in 2023, most of them boys.
The situation in Ukraine: 1,682 attacks on children’s health, health facilities and supplies, storage facilities and ambulances, and more than 3,000 attacks on educational facilities were reported in February 2022, leaving some 5.3 million Ukrainian children without safe access to education.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 300 million people worldwide are in need of humanitarian assistance and protection. Of these, 74.1 million are in Eastern and Southern Africa. The war in Sudan has led to an increase in humanitarian needs of 15.8 million people in 2023, which is expected to rise to 30 million by 2024. Of these, 3.5 million are children. Sudan is the country with the highest number of displaced children in the world.
War is considered “preventable” by up to 80 per cent of Italian citizens. The report also explored Italians’ perceptions of war based on a Demopolis opinion poll: 80% consider them “preventable events” (75% in 2021); 71% can name at least one war that has taken place in the last five years (53%); 65% follow local news, not major international issues (82%). 72% want to strengthen the role of the UN (74%).
74% oppose the use of armed intervention, preferring the use of political mediation (62%).
Conflicts increasingly forgotten by Italian TV news. The Pavia Observatory monitors whether and how conflicts are reported on Italian TV news. In 2022, there were 4,695 news reports on wars, representing 11.7% of all news (42,271). Of all the war coverage, 96.5 per cent related to the war in Ukraine and 3.5 per cent to Afghanistan and Syria. In 2023, there were 3,808 news reports on wars, accounting for 8.9% of all news (42,976). The Israeli-Palestinian conflict accounted for 50.1% of all news stories, the war in Ukraine for 46.5% and the remaining 3.4% of all news stories covered 15 countries at war.
In one year, 6 countries at war (Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Iraq and Kenya) received no media coverage at all.
Contributions made to the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI) under the “Eight per Thousand” law: 58.2% went to war-torn countries. Faced with this reality, the CEI’s Service for Charitable Interventions for the Development of Peoples funded 1,351 projects in 28 countries experiencing extreme or very severe conflicts between November 2018 and 31 October 2024. Out of a total of 2,321 projects financed by CEI between 2018 and 2014, more than half (58.2%) involved countries at war (57.6% of the funds disbursed).
Beccegato: “The international situation is extremely worrying.” “All the data collected by the various research bodies and agencies point to an extremely worrying scenario, both in terms of the increase in high-intensity and very high-intensity wars, as well as the growing number of deaths and people in need of humanitarian aid, and the number of refugees worldwide, which has more than doubled,” Paolo Beccegato, co-editor of the volume with Walter Nanni, told SIR. The fact that conflicts “in Ukraine, Gaza and parts of the Middle East are now being fought by states and between blocs and their allies” is also a cause for concern. “These indicators show that the international geopolitical context is extremely worrying,” he said, with a threefold appeal
for “a peace based on the protection of rights and not on the logic of the strongest”:
to re-launch “a dialogue based on a win-win logic involving all stakeholders”. He added: “In the last 25 years of research, we have found that poverty, environmental degradation, financial speculation and the arms industry are factors linked to the growth of organised armed violence. The fight against these factors implies undermining the fertile ground in which wars take root”. Lastly, “we must rethink the structures, values, education and culture that could underpin an international order in which peace means not just the absence of war but harmony between societies.”
