The world is more peaceful: "The number of conflicts (both international and civil) fell from over 50 at the start of the 1990s to just over 30 in 2005 (defini

The world is more peaceful: "The number of conflicts (both international and civil) fell from over 50 at the start of the 1990s to just over 30 in 2005 (definitions are obviously fluid; these are the ones used by scholars at the universities of Uppsala and British Columbia for a project called the “Human Security Report”). On their definitions, the number of international wars peaked during the 1970s and has been falling slowly since. The number of civil wars continued to rise until about 1990 and then fell precipitately. In total, the death toll in battle fell from over 200,000 a year in the mid-1980s to below 20,000 in the mid-2000s." The Economist, 28 June 2008: http://www.economist.com/node/10564141 http://www.economist.com/node/10564141