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Research by geographers on incidents of violence and conflict worldwide, through the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) project, is informing strategy and policy to better allocate resources within conflict-affected states.

 

Issue

The lack of evidence on incidents of conflict and violence worldwide has resulted in the journalistic mis-representation of events as well as poorly evidenced policy on resource allocation in places affected by conflict.  

 

Approach

Geographers at the University of Sussex designed and implemented a state-of-the-art conflict measurement and collection system through a disaggregated data collection, analysis, and crisis mapping project, ACLED, that collects the dates, actors, types of violence, locations, and the number of fatalities of all reported political violence and protest events across the globe.

 

Impact

ACLED data have been used to inform and support the decision-making capacity of governments and governmental bodies, including the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), Ministry of Defence (MOD), UK Home Office; US State Department; US Department of Defence; United Nations, African Union; European Union and others.

ACLED data have also been used by INGOs (international non-governmental humanitarian organisations) involved in crisis response and mitigation of conflicts and violence, including: the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Austrian Red Cross, Darfur Women Action, Save the Children, Search for Common Ground, the World Bank and others.

ACLED is used by asylum caseworkers, Country of Origin Information (COI) researchers, policy-makers, and decision-making authorities across the EU to gauge the potential for, and needs of, displaced and conflict-affected communities. 

 

More information

Institution: University of Sussex

Researchers: Professor Clionadh Raleigh

 

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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY NC 4.0), which permits use, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is cited and it is for non-commercial purposes. Please contact us for other uses.

How to cite

Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) (2023) Changing global political, humanitarian, media and public understanding and actions on political violence. Available at https://rgs.org/changingglobalpolitical  Last accessed on: <date>

 

Featured image: Spenser H / Unsplash