A steady
escalation
From 2015 to 2021 the world was already more violent than the decades before — an average of ~14,000 deaths per month across all conflicts globally. The numbers felt containable. Then three events broke the ceiling.
2015–2021
2015 full year
Three shocks that
never reversed
Oct 2016. The Mosul offensive peaks — a first ceiling break.
Feb 2022. Russia invades Ukraine. Monthly deaths jump and never return to baseline.
Oct 2023. Gaza war begins. The toll spikes above 26,000 in a single month — the highest in the dataset.
highest single month
The ones who
were not fighting
Strip away combatant deaths. What remains is the red layer — violence deliberately targeting civilians: homes, markets, hospitals. Abductions. Sexual violence as a weapon of war.
In 2024, 43,751 people were killed in incidents classified as violence against civilians. One in six of all conflict deaths.
targeting civilians
Still
accelerating.
In 2025 the line has not come down. Sudan's civil war — largely absent from Western coverage — is producing some of the highest monthly tolls of the decade.
The next section asks who, specifically, is dying — and where. The aggregate hides a geography of suffering that is radically unequal.
historic record