Both academic publications and public media often make inappropriate use of incommensurate con铿俰ct statistics, creating misleading impressions about patterns in global warfare. This article clari铿乪s the distinction between combatant deaths, battle deaths, and war deaths. A new dataset of battle deaths in armed con铿俰ct is presented for the period 1946鈥�2002. Global battle deaths have been decreasing over most of this period, mainly due to a decline in interstate and internationalised civil armed con铿俰ct. It is far more difficult to accurately assess the number of war deaths in con铿俰cts both past and present. But there are compelling reasons to believe that there is a need for increased attention to non-battle causes of mortality, especially displacement and disease in con铿俰ct studies. Therefore, it is demographers, public health specialists, and epidemiologists who can best describe the true human cost of many recent armed con铿俰cts and assess the actions necessary to reduce that toll.
This is a reprint of Lacina, Bethany Ann; & Nils Petter Gleditsch (2005) , European Journal of Population 21(2): 145鈥�165.
