ACLED Conflict Index | July 2023

All countries and territories are assessed according to each indicator. Countries are then ranked by their scores for each indicator.

Definitions

In alphabetical order:

Cartels: Organized armed groups that do not seek to topple the state, but rather seek to control territory for the purpose of extracting exclusive economic benefits via illicit activities.¹Lessing, B. (2015). "Logics of Violence in Criminal War." Journal of Conflict Resolution 59.8: 1486-1516. Examples include the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico.

Event: The fundamental unit of observation in ACLED is referred to as the “event.” Each coded event involves at least one designated actor – e.g. a named rebel group (or, in some cases, an unidentified group), the type of action carried out, a specific named location, a specific date, and other key variables. ACLED currently codes for six event types and 25 sub-event types, both violent and non-violent, that enable analysis of patterns of political violence and demonstration activity.

Executions/Assassinations: The killing of ruling elites, prominent members of society, or important political figures and dissidents. Examples include the assassination of political elites in Yemen and the assassinations of social leaders in Colombia during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fatalities: In ACLED analysis, the use of the term fatalities always refers to reported fatalities recorded in the dataset, per ACLED fatality methodology.

Gangs: Organized criminal groups whose violent actions (e.g. battles and varied violence against civilians) can have clear political consequences despite a lack of an overt political agenda. They commonly cooperate with local elites and participate in income-seeking behavior, but vary in the degree to which they are organized and at what scale they operate. Examples include the Red Command in Brazil.

Gang Violence: Violence committed by criminal groups without an overt political agenda, also known as gangs (see above). Gang violence is only captured in the ACLED dataset in certain circumstances that have been determined to meet the parameters for inclusion based on the country-context, as outlined in the ACLED methodology brief, Gang Violence: Concepts, Benchmarks, and Coding Rules.

Insurgency: This term refers descriptively to violent activity carried out by an organized, armed, non-state group or groups internally against a governing authority, often to contest control over a territorial area. Use of the term is highly context-specific, and the aims, ideology, intensity, size, and geographic scope of insurgencies will vary.

Militias: The ACLED dataset categorizes two types of militia, political militias and identity militias, and acknowledges the actions of pro-government militias.

• Political Militias: Armed, organized groups with political goals that use violence to advance those goals. Unlike rebel groups, political militias generally do not actively seek to topple or replace the national government using violence, though some are organized in opposition to government authority (e.g. anti-government militias in the United States that at times shift orientation based on the dominant national party or president). These groups often cooperate or ally with various domestic elites as well as external forces, albeit typically without a formal link. Examples include Loyalist militias in Northern Ireland, far-right militias and militant social movements in the United States (such as the Three Percenters or the Proud Boys), and the Bakassi Boys in Nigeria.
• Identity Militias: Armed and violent groups organized around a collective, common feature including community, ethnicity, region, religion, or, in exceptional cases, livelihood. Therefore, identity militias captured in the ACLED dataset include those reported as tribal, clan, communal, ethnic, local, community, religious, and livelihood militias. Violent events involving identity militias are often referred to as communal violence, as these violent groups frequently act locally, in the pursuit of local goals, resources, power, security, and retribution. An armed group claiming to operate on behalf of a larger identity community may be associated with that community, but not represent it (e.g. Luo Ethnic Militia in Kenya or Fulani Ethnic Militia in Nigeria). Recruitment and participation are by association with the identity of the group. For more, see ACLED Codebook section on Actors.

Mob Violence/Vigilantism: Extrajudicial violence in response to crimes, real, perceived, or not yet committed.²Bateson, R. (2021). "The Politics of Vigilantism." Comparative Political Studies 54.6: 923-955. This can also include the use of violence to punish social infractions or deviations from social norms. Examples include lynchings in Port au Prince, Haiti, or South Africa, as well as pandemic-related attacks against healthcare workers in India.

Organized Criminal Violence: Organized crime is the use of violence by highly organized groups in order to control (often illegal) markets and extract economic benefits. Resources that can motivate such violence can include timber, drugs, diamonds, minerals, and more. The designation of violence of this form is not based on the size of the organization or their scope. Organized violence can be localized but networked over larger spaces - such as the Mafia violence of Southern Italy;or specifically relating to a locality or entire region, such as the various agents and groups engaged in the Mexican drug war.

Political Violence: The use of force by a group with a political purpose or motivation. In analysis, this is a category used to refer collectively to ACLED’s violence against civilians, battles, and explosions/remote violence event types, as well as the mob violence sub-event type of the riot event type and the excessive force against protesters sub-event type of the protests event type. For more, see the ACLED Codebook.

Rebels: Armed, organized non-state actors that seek to challenge and topple or replace the government through the use of violence. These actors are also commonly referred to as insurgents or guerrilla fighters. They commonly coordinate with external forces and political militias/gangs. Examples include the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, Allied Democratic Forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, and Southern Transitional Council armed forces in Yemen.

Rioters: Individuals who engage in violence during demonstrations and mob violence events. Violence can be directed against people, property, or both. Examples include the 2020 Delhi riots in India and riots against COVID-19 restrictions.

Vigilantes/Mobs: A group of individuals engaging in extrajudicial violence meant to punish a crime, perceived crime, or social infraction.³Bateson, R. (2021). "The Politics of Vigilantism." Comparative Political Studies 54.6: 923-955. Examples include mobs engaging in the justicia comunitaria lynchings in Bolivia, especially within Indigenous communities, and lynching mobs in Bangladesh.

Violence Targeting Civilians: A category that encompasses all events of political violence that target civilians. This includes a broader scope than the violence against civilians event type (sexual violence, attack, and abduction/forced disappearance sub-event types). It is inclusive of the aforementioned sub-event types, the excessive force against protesters sub-event type, as well as explosions/remote violence and riots event types which involve civilians or protesters, but excludes the peaceful protest and protest with intervention sub-event types. Violence targeting civilians is typically used in ACLED analysis because it reflects the widest scope of violence faced by civilians recorded in the dataset.

Data Sources

ACLED data on political violence from the 12 months preceding the latest version of the Index are used to create the four indicators (e.g. July 2022 to July 2023 for the 2023 mid-year update). All ACLED events are collected using the same methodology, allowing a comparison of event numbers for political violence. Political violence events include the ‘Battles’, ‘Explosions/Remote violence’, and ‘Violence against civilians’ event types, as well as the ‘Mob violence’ and ‘Excessive force against protesters’ sub-event types.

Figures on exposed populations are derived using data from WorldPop.

To determine the overall ranking of countries in the Index, ACLED first ranks each country within each of the four indicators. An average ranking is calculated for each country based on those composite rankings, forming the final, overall ranking of the Index.

A country’s overall ranking on the Index determines their level of conflict. The top 10 countries in the Index are in the ‘Extreme’ category, followed by the next 20 countries in the ‘High’ category, and finally the next 20 countries are in the ‘Turbulent’ category. The remaining countries are in the ‘Low/Inactive’ category.

The 50 countries and territories in the ‘Extreme’ to ‘Turbulent’ categories account for 97% of all political violence events recorded by ACLED. The remaining 3% of political violence events are distributed across 117 other countries and territories.

As of the 2023 mid-year update, approximately 73% of all political violence took place in the countries with ‘Extreme’ conflict levels. Nineteen percent of political violence events occurred in countries with ‘High’ conflict levels, followed by 4% in countries or territories with ‘Turbulent’ conflict levels. The countries with ‘Low/Inactive’ conflicts made up 3% of political violence events recorded by ACLED.