ConflictWatch — glossary

Name: ConflictWatch live feed
Creator: ConflictWatch

Plain-language definitions of the terms used across ConflictWatch (UCDP).

Types of organized violence

Organized violence: The use of armed force between organized actors that results in recorded deaths. UCDP’s umbrella category, divided into state-based conflict, non-state conflict and one-sided violence.
State-based armed conflict: Organized violence in which a government is one of the parties. Distinguished from non-state and one-sided violence by the involvement of a state actor.
Non-state conflict: Armed conflict between organized groups where neither party is a government. A separate UCDP category from state-based conflict.
One-sided violence: The use of armed force against civilians by a government or an organized group. Recorded separately from violence between armed parties.

Armed conflict (threshold): In UCDP terms, a conflict that reaches at least 25 recorded battle-related deaths in a calendar year. Below this level a situation is not counted as an active armed conflict in the dataset.
War (threshold): A conflict that reaches at least 1,000 recorded battle-related deaths in a single calendar year — the most intense band. Most active conflicts in a given year fall below it.
Battle-related deaths: Deaths resulting directly from fighting between parties to a conflict. The basis for UCDP’s thresholds; they exclude indirect deaths from disease, hunger or displacement.
Excess (indirect) deaths: Deaths caused indirectly by conflict — from disrupted healthcare, hunger, disease and displacement — rather than directly by fighting. Estimated separately and often far larger than the battle-related count.

Recorded estimate: A fatality figure compiled from available reports, not an exact count. Published with uncertainty and typically a floor, since unreported deaths leave totals undercounted.
Low / best / high range: The three values UCDP publishes for a conflict’s fatalities: the best estimate plus a lower and upper bound expressing how uncertain that figure is.
Geocoding: Assigning each event to an administrative area and date rather than a precise location, reflecting what the underlying reports can actually support.
CC-BY license: Creative Commons Attribution — the open license under which UCDP releases its data, permitting reuse and redistribution with proper credit to the source.