About the Index
The Armed Conflict Location & Events Data Organisation has created the 'Conflict Index' to rank the most violent current global conflicts.
The 50 countries in the ACLED index account for 97% of all conflict events in the last 12 months.
Countries are ranked from the most violent conflict (1- Myanmar) to the least violent (50- PNG) based on average ranking in the following indicators:
1. How fatal are political violence events?
2. How many political violence events are targeted towards civilians?
3. What proportion of the country experiences a high level of violence?
4. How many non-state armed, organized groups are operating within the conflict?
Limitations
Numbering
In this article, ACLED rank numbers were inverted to allow for the most violent conflict to have the largest value (50), and thus the largest circle diameter on the map.
Ie. on the ACLED conflict index, Myanmar has a violence ranking of no. 1, but for this assignment, the violence ranking of Myanmar was 50.
Updating the Index
The Index was last updated in January and is updated every six months.
As the nature of conflict is constantly changing, it is likely the index also fluctuates, affecting its accuracy.
Ideally, the data collection would occur in July, when the next Index update is released.