40 Years of wars

Armed conflicts have taken up to 21 million lives since the Second World War and as recently as 1983 some four million troops were fighting in 75 countries according to a United Nations study released yesterday. 

During 1983, 40 separate conflicts were identified and eights countries had troops fighting on foreign soil, the UN said in its annual report on the world social situation. 

“In conflicts where it is possible to make a meaningful distribution between  casualties in and out of uniform, three out of every five fatalities were civilians”, it said. 

It put the average death toll from armed conflict at between 33,000 and 41,000 a month since 1945. (Reuters)

Guardian, 16 February.