For those who think the world is going to hell in a hand-cart, some good news at last. The number of full-scale wars is actually in dramatic decline.

According to a report by the Germany-based Development and Peace Foundation, there haven't been this few significant armed confrontations since the early 1960s.

The report - Global Trends 2007: Vulnerability and Human Security in the 21st Century - quotes some surprising figures from another German research organisation, the Hamburg Working Group on the Causes of War (AKUF), which show the number of major armed conflicts soared after the end of the Cold War, reaching a high of 55 in 1992.

It was indeed a bloody period. The first Gulf War, the Balkan wars, Sierra Leone and lesser-known conflicts in Central Asia all took their toll. Since then, however, the report says the numbers have declined dramatically, down to 27 countries at war in 2004 and 28 in 2005.

So while it's tempting to write off the interminable machinations of the United Nations and the ever-burgeoning conflict resolution industry, there's evidence here that we might actually be getting somewhere.

The report describes as "under-rated" the increased engagement of the international community in peace settlements, conflict prevention and peacekeeping activities over the last 15 years.

Quoting the 2005 Human Security Report, for instance, it says the number of U.N. peacekeeping operations more than doubled between 1988 and 2004. In 1989, it adds, no one was tried for grave human rights abuses. By 2004, 11 countries had launched prosecutions.

DEFINING 'WAR'

But before we all go turning our swords into ploughshares, there are - as always - some significant caveats. The first is to do with what we mean by 'war'.

The AKUF figures, for instance, are based on a fairly rigid classification; war is defined as a "violent mass conflict" that must involve at least one regular army, both sides must have a minimum level of centrally-directed organisation, and armed operations must occur with some continuity.

So while conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan are easily classified, failing states like Zimbabwe are not included. Neither would sporadic clashes between, say, Chadian government forces and Sudan-backed militias count.

And here's the nub of the problem. The decline in frequency of conventional war is to be welcomed, but it's accompanied paradoxically by a rise in fragile, unstable and potentially failing states. Most fragile states have experienced conflict at some point in the last 15 years, but even if the fighting has stopped, the collapse of their public institutions continues to gnaw away at the social fabric.

According to the Failed States Index, developed by the U.S.-based Fund for Peace research institute and the journal Foreign Policy, some two billion people worldwide live in insecure states, "with varying degrees of vulnerability to widespread civil conflict". And while usual suspects such as Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Iraq top the list, countries such as Bangladesh, Egypt and Russia also score highly.

What causes this? The Global Trends report makes the point that poor countries are more likely to be violent ones, so countries impoverished by conflict are much more vulnerable to renewed fighting, even if a war ends. The fragile peace in southern Sudan is a classic current example.

The report also notes that the misuse of external funding and development aid can prop up dictatorial regimes (one example cited is Sani Abacha in 1990s Nigeria), thus preventing a country from stabilising and growing into a functioning democracy.

So the overall picture gets less friendly, even more so if you use a wider definition of conflict.

POLITICAL CONFLICTS ON THE RISE

The Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research, based at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, defines conflicts as "the clashing of interests...over national values of some duration and magnitude between at least two parties...that are determined to pursue their interests and win their cases".

The Institute has just put out its 2006 Conflict Barometer, and it makes uncomfortable reading.

Based on the wider definition of conflict, the report states that in 2006, there were 278 political conflicts in all. Six of those were all-out wars (including Somalia, Sri Lanka and Israel) whereas 29 were severe crises (Chechnya, Colombia and Kashmir, to name but three).

In contrast to the tentative optimism of the Global Trends report, the Heidelberg Barometer says conflicts of the highest intensity increased significantly from the previous year from two to six. And while five conflicts formally ended in 2005, another nine got under way in 2006.

Most significantly perhaps, the number of medium-intensity conflicts (we're talking the Philippines' communist insurgency, East Timor clashes and Haiti unrest) reached 90 in 2005, an all-time high, dropping only slightly last year to 83.

The overall conclusion? The number of serious, large-scale wars may be going down, but the world is not becoming a more peaceful place.

So having started this blog with a stab at some good news, it looks like we remain every bit as violent and destructive as we ever were. Sorry.

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