Human Security Report Project

The Human Security Report Project (HSRP) is an independent research centre that has been affiliated with the School for International Studies since 2007. The HSRP analyzes global and regional trends in political violence, as well as their causes and consequences. The HSRP’s flagship publication, the Human Security Report, is widely cited in the media and highly regarded by academics and practitioners. Additional online resources highlight research and analysis in the field of human security.

Human Security Report

The number of international conflicts and war deaths has been on the decline since the 1950s, as have the number of civil wars since the early 1990s. Part I of the Human Security Report 2009/2010 examines the forces and political developments behind these trends, and argues that the fact that these forces persist, or have strengthened, provides grounds for cautious optimism about the future of global security. In addition, the indirect costs of war have been shrinking, as have nationwide death rates during periods of warfare in the majority of war-afflicted countries. Part II of the Report reveals and explains the counterintuitive trends in the data.

Prior publications have focused on other themes. The first Human Security Report, published in 2005, documents a dramatic, but largely unknown, decline in the number of wars, genocides and human rights abuse over the past decade. The Human Security Brief 2006 describes the changes specific to sub-Saharan Africa, which has experienced the greatest decrease in political violence. The Human Security Brief 2007 challenges the expert consensus that the threat of global terrorism is increasing, instead documenting a sharp net decline in the incidence of terrorist violence around the world.

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Human Security Gateway

Search this information and research database to locate over 31,000 human security-related resources. Subscribe to receive notification of new additions to the database, filtered by topic, region, language, or format.

Security Stats

View annual data on the incidence of organized violence around the world, the number of fatalities, and the number of conflict onsets and terminations.

The Human Security Report Project strives to make evidence-based human security research accessible to policy and research communities, the media, and the interested public. Funding is provided by the governments of Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Learn more about the Human Security Report Project.