Peace & Security

Recent scandals

The biggest cases of the last three months, decided by a regulator or settled by an official agreement: unauthorized military exports and international sanctions breached by companies. No ongoing investigations.

Who spends, and where violence strikes

What official data measure, and what they put at the top: where the most is spent on armies, where conflicts kill the most civilians, where homicide is most common, where refugees come from and who hosts them.

How it works

The cost of war, the work of peace: six mechanisms, backed by official figures.

• Civilians in conflict

  Conflict-related civilian deaths fell by 23% in 2025, from 48,011 to 37,163. One in five victims was a child and one in four was female, and Northern Africa and Western Asia accounted for 65% of all civilian deaths. The UN warns that civilian deaths may be undercounted.

• Fleeing, often within one's own country

  At the end of 2025, 68.7 million people were displaced within their own country, 41.6 million were refugees and 9 million were asylum-seekers awaiting a decision. Internally displaced people account for 58% of all forcibly displaced people, and 65% of refugees are hosted in neighbouring countries, according to UNHCR.

• Children in war

  In 2025, the UN verified 38,558 grave violations affecting 24,174 children, the highest number of children affected since its mandate was established 30 years ago: 6,266 children killed, 7,958 maimed, 6,607 recruited and used in hostilities, 5,129 abducted. A third of the victims were girls.

• What armies cost

  In 2025, world military expenditure reached $2,887 billion, the 11th year of consecutive rises, or 2.5% of world GDP, its highest level since 2009, according to SIPRI. According to the UN, less than 4% of the $2.7 trillion spent in 2024, or $93 billion, is needed annually to end hunger by 2030.

• Violence beyond war

  The global intentional homicide rate fell from 5.9 victims per 100,000 people in 2015 to 5.1 in 2024. Latin America and the Caribbean recorded the highest rate in 2024, at 19.3. The female homicide rate, however, declined at only half the pace of the male rate, according to the UN.

• Peace is negotiated almost without women

  Women make up only 7% of negotiators on average and 14% of mediators in peace processes, and nearly nine in ten negotiation tracks include no women negotiators at all. Yet around 676 million women live within 50 kilometres of deadly conflict, the highest figure since the 1990s, according to the UN.

What surprises people

What war changes

A war does not stop at the front line: it empties plates, closes schools, deepens poverty and strikes health care. Here is what official sources measure.

• Hunger

  In 2025, 266 million people across 47 countries experienced high levels of acute food insecurity, two-thirds of them in just 10 nations. Conflict remains the primary driver, accounting for more than half of all people facing severe hunger, according to the UN.

• School

  Conflict and climate change are rolling back hard-won gains in education, according to Education Cannot Wait, the United Nations fund for education in emergencies: in 2026, 258 million school-aged children and adolescents have their education affected by crises, and 93 million are entirely out of school.

• Poverty

  Since 2020, per capita GDP in economies hit by conflict or instability has shrunk by an average of 1.8% per year, while it expanded by 2.9% in other developing economies. In 2025, 421 million people there are struggling on less than $3 a day, more than in the rest of the world combined, according to the World Bank; by 2030, nearly 60% of the world's extreme poor.

• Health care

  Since 2018, more than 10,400 attacks on health care have been reported across 29 countries and territories, causing approximately 5,700 deaths and over 8,000 injuries. To date, no one has been held accountable, according to WHO.

Case studies

History

ProgressMilestoneAhead

What has already worked

The picture is not frozen: homicide is declining, all declared chemical weapons have been destroyed, and at least 170,000 children have been released from armed groups. Examples, with figures.

Myths and realities

• Common belief“Refugees mostly head for rich countries.”

  In realityMost stay close to home: 65% of refugees are hosted by neighbouring countries, and low- and middle-income countries host 68% of refugees and other people in need of international protection, according to UNHCR.

• Common belief“The UN has its own army.”

  In realityThe UN has no military forces of its own: for each peacekeeping operation, Member States provide, on a voluntary basis, the military and police personnel required, according to the UN.

• Common belief“War and terrorism are the deadliest forms of violence.”

  In realityHomicide kills more: an annual average of around 440,000 deaths from 2019 to 2021, more than conflict-related and terrorist killings combined, according to UNODC. In 2022, despite a surge of more than 95% in conflict deaths, the global burden of homicide was still twice as large.

• Common belief“Since the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapons have been disappearing.”

  In realityThe global inventory has fallen, mainly because Russia and the USA are dismantling retired warheads: it still stood at 12,187 warheads in January 2026, 9,745 of them in military stockpiles. And SIPRI expects the trend to be reversed in the coming years, as dismantlement slows while the deployment of new nuclear weapons accelerates.

What we don't know yet

• The real number of civilians killed. Determining the victims' status is not always possible, especially during intense hostilities: in 2025, the UN could not determine the status of 13,165 victims. Civilian deaths may therefore be undercounted.
• The scale of sexual violence in conflict. The UN verified 9,788 cases in 2025, more than double the previous year. But these figures “should be understood not as the full picture”, according to its Special Representative: the violations “remain largely unseen and underreported”.
• The number of missing people. The ICRC counts 284,000 missing persons worldwide as of December 2024, but only the cases documented by the Family Links Network; the real total is likely to be far higher, according to the ICRC.

What could happen next

Where current trends lead, according to SIPRI and the UN. Armies keep getting more expensive; a small share of that money would change a lot.

For uprooted people, UNHCR has set a goal: to halve, by 2035, the number of refugees in protracted displacement who are unable to meet their basic needs without external support. But money is short: in 2025, the UN's humanitarian appeal received only $12 billion, the lowest funding in a decade.