In both Ethiopia and Ukraine, fighting has been characterised by trench warfare, with warring parties being accused of using human wave tactics. 'A common perception is that Russia's war in Ukraine was the bloodiest conflict in 2022, but in fact, more people died in Ethiopia where the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) has fought the Ethiopian army, the latter supported by Eritrea, since late 2020,' says Davies. Even so, the data shows that more people died in those two conflicts in 2022 than in the whole world the year before. The numbers are likely to be significantly revised as more information becomes available. This is a low estimate as information from these conflicts is scarce and subject to extensive propaganda. Together, the wars in Ethiopia and Ukraine resulted in at least 180,000 battle-related deaths in 2022. Instead, violence in Ethiopia and Ukraine escalated drastically,' says Shawn Davies, Senior Analyst at UCDP. 'We see this increase despite considerable de-escalation in the two deadliest conflicts of 2021 Yemen and Afghanistan. A new report from Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) at Uppsala University shows that this is a 97 per cent increase compared with the previous year, and the highest number since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Journal of Peace Research 39(5).At least 237,000 people died in organised violence in 2022. Gleditsch, Nils Petter, Peter Wallensteen, Mikael Eriksson, Margareta Sollenberg, and Håvard Strand (2002) Armed Conflict 1946-2001: A New Dataset. Pettersson, Therése and Kristine Eck (2018) Organized violence, 1989-2017. They classify wars into extra state / extra systemic violent conflicts (state against non-state actor outside of existing borders), inter-state conflict (between two states) and intra-state (state against non-state actor within existing borders) and internationalised intra-state conflicts (state aided by other states against non-state actor within existing borders). The underlying definition of war only recognises wars or conflicts in which at least one state is involved and which results in at least 25 battle-related deaths. The UCDP and PRIO annually publish the Armed Conflict Dataset, that contains latest information on conflicts per year. UCDP - Uppsala Conflict Data Program/ PRIO - Peace Research Institute Oslo

Ucdp armed conflict database