Uppsala Conflict Data Program

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) is a data collection program on organized violence, based at Uppsala University in Sweden. The UCDP is a leading provider of data on organized violence and armed conflict, and it is the oldest ongoing data collection project for civil war, with a history of almost 40 years. UCDP data are systematically collected and have global coverage, comparability across cases and countries, and long time series. Data are updated annually and are publicly available, free of charge. Furthermore, preliminary data on events of organized violence in Africa is released on a monthly basis.

The UCDP's data is published annually in the ''Journal of Peace Research.'' The UCDP also makes its data publicly available through its interactive website
UCDP website

Background

The UCDP began recording information on ongoing violent conflicts in the 1980s. It became clear that more systematic and global data on armed conflicts was necessary for conducting research in the expanding academic discipline of peace and conflict studies.

Initially, the program collected data only on so-called "armed conflicts", defined as fighting exceeding 25 battle-related deaths between two actors of which at least one was a state. In later years, the data collection grew, and the program began collecting data on "non-state conflicts" (where neither actor is a state) and "one-sided violence" (where an organized actor attacks unarmed civilians).

One of the leading researchers associated with the UCDP is Professor Peter Wallensteen that founded and led the program since its initiation until 31 July 2015. After this Wallensteen continued to serve as a Senior Advisor for the UCDP.

Organization

The UCDP is based at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research of Uppsala University in Sweden. The program is led by Associate Professor Magnus Öberg, and employs approximately 10-15 research assistants and researchers. A number of scholars and Ph.D. candidates are also affiliated with the program. In addition to collecting data, the program disseminates knowledge on trends and dynamics of armed conflict to the public via lectures at academic and government forums, as well as through participating in conferences and exhibitions such as the Swedish Forum for Human Rights.

Cooperation

UCDP is part of several important collaborations, for instance the extensive and well-established collaborations with the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in Norway. Additionally, UCDP works closely with the Violence Early-Warning System (ViEWS) project at Uppsala University, Sweden, as well as with Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) and the Quality of Government Institute (QoG), both based at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. UCDP was part of the European Network for Conflict Research (ENCoRE), a network funded by Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) of the European Union, which included all the leading research institutes in Europe that conduct quantitative and data driven research on armed conflict. UCDP also had a long-standing cooperation with the Human Security Report Project (HSRP) in Vancouver, Canada during the years that the project was running.

Usage of UCDP data

Hundreds of scholars have used the UCDP's data for research. Aside from being widely used in research on peace and conflict at universities both in Sweden and abroad, UCDP data is also used in a number of other disciplines, including public health, business and economics, migration and diasporas, as well as in studies that focus on agriculture, biodiversity and fisheries to name a few examples.

UCDP is prominently used by the United Nations, and serves as a main data source in high profile reports by organizations in the UN family including UN/WB, the World Bank, and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). UCDP data is an integral part of the World Bank’s ''World Development Indicators'', where it is the only indicator for measuring armed conflict and its levels of intensity, and the '' Global Burden of Disease'' (GBD) program. The data is used by numerous Swedish and foreign government agencies and by many international NGOs, e.g. Save the Children International, Small Arms Survey and GapMinder. UCDP data are included in the Global Peace Index of the Institute for Economics and Peace, and the Mo Ibrahim Foundation makes use of UCDP data for its index that assesses the quality of governance in African countries.

UCDP data is frequently used by journalists. Some of the largest media outlets in Sweden recurrently interview UCDP staff, and UCDP data is regularly published in, among others, Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, and the main Swedish radio broadcaster, Sveriges Radio. In addition, UCDP is often used and referred to in international media regarding armed conflicts and organized violence, for instance in the BBC
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