Today, we may be living in the most peaceful times in known human history. If the decline in civilians, soldiers, or militants being killed as a result of wars or armed conflicts around the world is an indication for greater peace, we have globally made considerable progress toward peace. Since the creation of the United Nations at the end of two devastating World Wars, the absolute numbers – and even more so the relative numbers of battle-related deaths have, with annual fluctuations, drastically declined.

Indeed, for anyone in the world living today, the risk of being killed in a war or armed conflict is only about 2% to 5% compared to the risk their parents had faced living in the 1950s. In fact, today, four to five times as many people get killed in vehicle accidents then in wars and armed conflicts. The reduction in the risks of being killed due to wars is even more pronounced if we look back at events in the first half of the twentieth century. For the ten years from 2005 to 2015 combined, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) lists a grand total of about 567,000 battle-related deaths. This ten-year accumulated figure is substantially lower than the numbers of people killed in single battles during WWI or WWII. For example, the battle of Verdun in 1916 may have cost the lives of about 714,000 men, mostly soldiers, and the battle over Stalingrad in 1942/1943 is estimated to have cost the lives of between 1.3 and 1.7 million men and women, mostly civilians.

For peace, there is a further encouraging development: Since the end of the Cold War, the number of interstate wars has constantly declined. Today, wars among nation-states in which national armies fight each other over territory or power, once a regular scourge in human history, have almost completely vanished. The 2003 Iraq War saw the last major combat between regular armies; since then, confrontations between regular armed forces have been limited to skirmishes. In 2013, 2014, and 2015, the most recent years for which we have data, the UCDP registered 34, 40, and 50 armed conflicts respectively worldwide. All except one were intrastate armed conflicts.