War declining worldwide, studies say

[scott]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002019818_war30.html

[aartamen]

It's just a phaze, it will pass. Like global warming thingy.

[achilles]

The Canadian center's director, Andrew Mack, said the figures don't include deaths from war-induced starvation and disease, deaths from ethnic conflicts not involving states, or unopposed massacres, such as in Rwanda in 1994.

Genocides can be excluded since its a unilateral act, but the exclusion of the side-effects(war induced starvation etc) may be a cause of bias in estimating the victims, although those parameters might be in decline as well. This is a fortunate trend in regards to war victims, although i do not believe we can base any predictions on that, definitely we cannot claim that the trend will continue. Warfare is a pretty stochastic variable and numbers may start peaking again.

Really nice article.

[Trident-za]

A question: if genocide, or "unilateral acts", are on the rise, is the world a better place just because the big guys aren't fighting amongst each other right now? This seems like a weird perversion of the statistics to me. Unless they really mean, war in places "that really count" are on a downward spiral.

If you ask me, the world as a whole is getting more violent and unfriendly - despite these "facts". And the side-effects of war, like starvation etc have always been an issue - you can't ignore them now!

[achilles]

A question: if genocide, or "unilateral acts", are on the rise, is the world a better place just because the big guys aren't fighting amongst each other right now? This seems like a weird perversion of the statistics to me. Unless they really mean, war in places "that really count" are on a downward spiral.

If you ask me, the world as a whole is getting more violent and unfriendly - despite these "facts". And the side-effects of war, like starvation etc have always been an issue - you can't ignore them now!

Answer to bold: no its definitely not...you have been explicit in what i ve called 'bias' and i perfectly agree...it can be considered a statistical perversion. However the fact that less and less people are killed in combat (more of a random trend if you ask me, subject to fluctuations) is good irrespective of the statistical rigorousness. I wish i could have access to details regarding the statistical techniques they used...would be interesting.