Update
Introducing ACLED's new conflict categories
Conflict is changing — and we’re changing how we track it.
Modern conflict is more complex, more fragmented, and harder to define than ever before. Traditional labels like “civil war” or “terrorism” no longer capture the full picture.
To help make sense of this shifting landscape, ACLED is launching five new conflict categories that are designed to make our data more meaningful, easier to work with, and more reflective of today’s realities.
Why now?
Asking “how many conflicts are there?” doesn’t lead to a simple answer.
Conflicts evolve. Agendas shift. Violence spreads across borders. What one analyst sees as a 30-year war, another might see as dozens of overlapping crises — and both may be right.
That’s why ACLED has always tracked political violence at the event level, letting users define what matters most to them. Now, to help organize that complexity, we’re introducing a new layer of structure.
The five conflict categories
These new categories act as meta-events that group thousands of incidents into broader conflict dynamics, each built on consistent, transparent criteria. Applied across events from 2020 onward, they help uncover trends and improve analysis.
🔹 Repression
Repression refers to state violence against civilians and protesters. It is often an early sign of deeper rights abuses.
→ Repression events have risen steadily since 2020 and peaked in 2024. Myanmar recorded the highest number globally.
🔹 Insurgency
Insurgency refers to long-running rebel activity, including battles, bombings, abductions, and looting.
→ Many of the world’s longest insurgencies are concentrated in Africa and increasingly involve airstrikes and remote attacks.
🔹 Atrocities
Atrocities are deliberate, large-scale civilian killings that are often tied to displacement and humanitarian crises.
→ Atrocity events surged after 2022, especially in Gaza and parts of Africa.
🔹 Terrorism
ACLED’s definition of terrorism is defined by tactics, not ideology, and is focused on groups that consistently target civilians more than others.
→ Groups can gain or lose this designation as their behavior changes over time.
🔹 Foreign military engagement
Foreign military engagement refers to state violence across national borders and includes invasions, airstrikes, and cross-border clashes.
→ These events now make up over 30% of global conflict activity, led by Russia and Israel.
More insight, not less complexity
These categories don’t replace ACLED’s granular event data; they enhance it. By organizing patterns and highlighting trends, they help researchers, analysts, and policymakers navigate the messy, shifting reality of modern conflict.
Methodology
Conflict categories
While ACLED maintains a detailed and rigorous coding structure, there is a growing need to complement this with more widely used conflict categories that reflect how users interpret and apply the data. ACLED has created a set of new, user-focused conflict categories designed to make ACLED data more accessible and actionable. Each category captures a broad conflict dynamic — state repression, rebel insurgency, atrocities against civilians, terrorist activity, or foreign military engagement — using consistent and transparent criteria grounded in event type, actor behavior, and other key attributes in the dataset.
These conflict categories do not replace ACLED’s existing event or sub-event types but instead offer an additional layer of categorization based on user demand and practical application.
These categories will be available for event data from 2020 onward, including new data added on a weekly basis. Members can download data files containing all events for each of the conflict categories below.
