Just over a quarter of the world’s countries and territories are currently on track to meet the targets of Sustainable Development Goal 16.1. As demonstrated in our 2021 update to the Global Violent Deaths database, there has been a six per cent rise in global deadly violence compared to 2020— a significant setback. Of the approximately 580,000 violent deaths, about 45 per cent were inflicted by firearms. If current trends continue or increase, the world will miss the target to halve all forms of violence and related death rates by 2030.

'The Russian Federation's war of aggression against Ukraine has exacted a devastating toll on the Ukrainian civilian population. Mounting an adequate humanitarian response will hinge on properly quantifying its scale and nature—never an easy task in a conflict zone, and immeasurably harder amid the fog of disinformation.

Are we on track towards peace? This question is essential to planning, developing, and evaluating any peacebuilding project, but the answer is contingent on data availability. To this end, the Global Violent Deaths (GVD) database, developed and updated regularly by the Small Arms Survey since 2004, collects information on direct conflict deaths and intentional homicides, which is combined in a single violent deaths indicator.

The GVD database collates data on homicides and direct conflict deaths into a single ‘violent death’ indicator (not including suicides), dating back to 2004.

'Though difficult to fathom as war rages in Ukraine, the years preceding the Russian invasion actually saw a reduction in global lethal violence. According to the latest update of the Small Arms Survey's Global Violent Deaths (GVD) database, loss of life resulting from interpersonal violence decreased substantially between 2016 and 2020. This decline suggests that the world has been making progress towards Target 16.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), under which states committed to 'significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere' by 2030.

Studying the evidence related to the burden of injury of a population is a critical component of developing strategies to prevent and reduce violence. In many countries around the world, national observatories have been established to collect data to measure and monitor armed violence in an effort to inform and strengthen evidence-based armed violence reduction initiatives.

In March of 2003, military forces primarily from the United States and United Kingdom invaded Iraq and little population-based health data has been available since. This study compares mortality during the period of 14.6 months before the invasion with the 17.8 months that followed and assesses the change in causes of death over that period.

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Working Paper No. 8

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Working Paper No. 3

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