The world is becoming more unstable and dangerous, and politics is increasingly conducted not through peaceful means but through violence.

One only needs to turn on the news, read a paper, or spend a few minutes on social media to get a sense that this is the case, but the hard data backs that sense up, too. ACLED – the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project – has recorded almost 200,000 incidents of political violence over the past year, up from 104,371 such events in 2020.

They estimate that 233,000 people have been killed in incidents of political violence this year and classify 50 nations as experiencing extreme, high, or turbulent levels of political violence; in just four of these nations do they judge the situation to be improving. On average, rates of global political violence have grown by 25 per cent year-on-year for each of the past four years.

Much of this growing political violence is down to a handful of intense violent conflicts. The Palestinian territories were the most dangerous places in the world this year, with four in five Palestinians exposed to violent conflict and 35,000 deaths. On average, 52 incidents of political violence occur in the Palestinian territories every day.

ACLED has recorded nearly 65,000 incidents of political violence associated with the war in Ukraine this year, up 14% on 2023 and 57% on 2022. And in Myanmar, embroiled in civil war since 2021, an average of 170 different armed groups have been active each week in 2024.

But political violence is also up outwith conflict zones. In the most significant single year of democratic elections in history, with over 1.6 billion ballots cast in 73 elections (and two more to come, in Chad and Croatia on December 29th), states........

© Herald Scotland