The ACLED Conflict Index can answer questions on how much conflict is happening in the world, where it is happening, and is it improving or worsening. This guide explains the rigorous methodology for the Index, including details on the indicators, rankings, and the data behind it.
The Index calculates where conflicts in every country and territory in the world vary according to four indicators — deadliness, danger to civilians, geographic diffusion, and the number of armed groups. The values for each indicator are calculated for each country or territory, scaled, and ranked. The top-ranked countries overall are experiencing the most severe and difficult-to-resolve conflicts.
The annual Conflict Index results are released in December and analyze data from the previous December through November of the current year. The Weekly Conflict Index is updated every Wednesday and provides a singular measure of conflict intensity in every country in the world.
Countries or territories often host multiple discrete conflicts, which can be the result of the accumulated actions of several armed groups. These groups often have differing political aims, trajectories, and life spans. The Index accounts for all conflicts occurring within countries or territories by examining their combined incidents of violence.
The Index is designed to first distinguish conflict risk factors by deadliness, danger, diffusion, and number of armed groups, and then create a relative country ranking based on the combined intensity of risks. Countries with high incident totals or high conflict fatalities are highly violent and deadly. But when incident and fatality counts are evaluated on their own — isolated from aggravating factors and local context — they can often distort the size and impact of conflict for different communities and governments.
Conflict is widespread and pervasive. ACLED collects data for more than 240 countries and territories in near real time. Conflicts differ in intensity, frequency, and form. Drawing on the latest data and patterns, the Index assesses levels of conflict according to four key indicators: deadliness, danger to civilians, geographic diffusion of conflict, and armed group fragmentation.
Countries are ranked within each of these four indicators, and those positions determine the overall ranking on the Index. A country’s position on the Index reflects its level of conflict compared to other countries.
Some degree of political violence occurs in almost every country and territory, but the highest levels are concentrated in the top 50 ranked locations on the Index.
Multiple types of conflict exist around the world, from civil wars and insurgencies to cartel competition and social violence. The countries that rank highly on the Index differ substantially in the types of conflict and violence they experience, even while many share similar levels of deadliness, danger, diffusion, and fragmentation.
In addition to ranking countries according to their conflict levels, positions in the Index are compared to previous years, and situations are assessed as improving, consistent, consistently extreme/high, or worsening.
The ACLED Conflict Index is a global assessment of how and where conflicts in every country and territory in the world vary according to four indicators — deadliness, danger to civilians, geographic diffusion, and the number of armed groups.
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| Indicator | Measure | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| Deadliness | How fatal are political violence events? |
The amount of political violence-related fatalities can indicate how intense conflict is within a state. The deadliness indicator represents the number of reported fatalities per country in the 12 months preceding the latest update of the Index (e.g., November 2024 to November 2025). |
| Danger |
How many political violence events are targeted toward civilians? |
Conflicts differ with respect to how much armed groups — including state actors — prey on civilians. Conflicts that have a higher rate of civilian violence are likely to continue and proliferate, in part because armed groups are not facing more active resistance from other armed entities. The danger indicator represents the number of violent events targeting civilians in the 12 months preceding the latest Index update. |
| Diffusion |
What proportion of the country experiences a high level of violence? |
Many conflicts can occur simultaneously in a country, adding to the geographic spread of conflict across states. This measure assesses the geographic distribution of conflict. Each country is divided into a 10 km by 10 km spatial grid. Grid cells that have a population of fewer than 100 people are excluded. Next, ACLED determines how many of a country’s geographic grid cells experience a high level of violence, defined as at least 10 events per year (representing the top 10% of cases). The diffusion indicator represents the proportion of high-violence grid cells to total cells (i.e., the percentage of a geographic area experiencing high levels of violence). |
|
Armed group fragmentation |
How many non-state armed, organized groups are operating within the conflict? |
The fragmentation of a conflict environment indicates the number of distinct threats and agendas that are accumulating in a given context and posing harm to communities and state institutions. It also indicates the number of distinct political motives and opportunities to form an armed group. A singular consolidated armed group can be a serious challenge to governments, but it can also participate in effective negotiations and engagements. A highly fragmented environment, in contrast, makes it more difficult to engage the necessary actors in effective negotiations and may indicate multiple overlapping conflicts that are more challenging to simultaneously resolve. The fragmentation indicator is a count of all armed, organized, and active rebel groups and political militias per country in the last 12 months (excluding unidentified armed groups and including pro-government militias). In addition, a maximum of one communal militia is counted per first-level administrative unit per country. |
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., November 2024 to November 2025). All ACLED events are collected using the same methodology, allowing a comparison of event numbers for political violence. All of ACLED’s event and sub-event types are categorized as either “political violence,” “demonstration,” or “strategic developments”. The Index uses events that fall under the “political violence” category, which captures a wide scope of political violence globally. For more on the coding methodology, see the ACLED Codebook.
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 its 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 in the “turbulent” category. The remaining countries are in the “low/inactive” category.
The Weekly Conflict Index uses the same principles of the annual Index. First, countries are ranked each week on the same indicator criteria as the annual Index. Next, a weight is assigned to each indicator: The danger and deadliness indicators are likely to change each week and thus carry slightly more weight than diffusion and fragmentation, which are less likely to see drastic changes on a weekly basis.
The square root of each indicator value is raised to its corresponding weight in order to reduce the dominance of extremely high values and allow the weights to amplify or diminish the impact of the indicator non-linearly. The resulting values are then added to form a single score, with a minimum value of 0 and no theoretical maximum value, since there is no pre-assumed maximum level of conflict in a country. For more details on how each indicator is weighted and other details on how the indicators are analyzed for the Weekly Conflict Index, see its full methodology.
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.
In ACLED analysis, the use of the term “fatalities” always refers to reported fatalities recorded in the dataset, per the ACLED fatality methodology.
In the context of ACLED’s gang violence methodology, gangs are 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 the scale at which they operate. Violence by gangs 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.
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. The use of the term is highly context-specific, and the aims, ideology, intensity, size, and geographic scope of insurgencies will vary.
The ACLED dataset categorizes two types of militias — political militias and identity militias — and acknowledges the actions of pro-government militias. For more, see the ACLED Codebook section on Actors.
Extrajudicial violence in response to crimes — real, perceived, or not yet committed. This can also include the use of violence to punish social infractions or deviations from social norms.
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.
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.
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
Use our interactive dashboard to access additional tools, resources, and data downloads relating to the Conflict Index.
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