Despite a dramatic decrease in insurgent activity in North Sinai through October (see Figure 1), the Islamic State affiliate group ‘State of Sinai’ have claimed responsibility for downing a Russian passenger plane on 31st October. Although several rival statements have thrown the validity of the Islamic State’s claim into question – two days after the…
August witnessed a continuation in the decrease of violent conflict events in Egypt, a trend that began in January 2015. Fatalities similarly dropped after military campaigns against the State of Sinai militant group in North Sinai produced a dramatic spike in July (see Figure 1). At first, the high casualty rate reported by the Egyptian…
Human rights abuses can range from physical violence to denials of peaceful assembly or freedom of expression. Amnesty International (2015) highlights shortcomings in justice and accountability, where crimes such as gender-based violence go unpunished; this impunity can have further negative ramifications within effected societies (ACLED, 18 February 2015). Irresponsible business practices associated with extractive industries…
ACLED collects disaggregated data of every event of political violence in Africa, henceforth expanding to Asia (Raleigh et al., 2010). A particularity of ACLED’s work is the publication of data on a real-time, weekly basis. One issue experienced in the collection of real-time data is that of reporting lags, by which information about a particular…
The Fragile States Index (FSI), produced by The Fund for Peace, highlights pressures faced by states, identifying “when those pressures are pushing a state towards the brink of failure”, with the intent of shaping assessments of political risk by researchers and policymakers (Messner et al., 2015). The FSI is calculated for countries worldwide using an…
Sustained collective action in the lead up to, over the course of, and in the fallout from, the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 has resulted in a rising trend of riots and protests, and an intensification in the violence witnessed across these events. The multiple social movements that emerged in the wake of 2011 have…
The growth of online media and easily accessible information has enabled conflict data projects to provide a granular and detailed picture of conflict dynamics with geographically and temporally discrete events (Gleditsch et al., 2013). However, reliance on secondary sources means that datasets may be vulnerable to the biases of those sources. Previous studies on the use of media…
Unidentified armed groups (UAGs) constitute a large share of violent actors in the ACLED dataset; approximately 15% of organized, armed conflict carried out by violent actors (e.g., government forces, rebels, political militias, communal militias, external forces) are at the hands of UAGs. There are many reasons why a group may be ‘unidentified’: the first is…
ACLED’s release of data for Asia in addition to ACLED’s African data will allow for new comparisons to be made in regard to the conflict patterns within and across countries on both continents. While the ACLED Asia team continues to collect backdated information across South and Southeast Asian states, the newly available real-time data can…
The Egyptian air force’s bombing campaign in Libya’s eastern city of Derna on the 16th February in retaliation of the killing of 21 Coptic Egyptians has sought to raise fundamental questions over the extent and reach of the Islamic State’s presence in Libya. Yet somewhat less explored is the impact the heightened activity by militants…