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	Non-conflict Armed Violence by Smal Arms Survey, Instituto Igarapé, agencies   Statistics on violent deaths should be treated with caution, writes Rachel Kleinfeld for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.   Think of the horror of people dying violently, and the war in Syria, or a mass shooting may spring to mind. But the surprising reality is that there are more people suffering violent deaths in countries "at peace" than there are in war zones.   Every violent death is a tragedy, but getting the numbers right matters. Reports of deaths in a war zone, a city suffering drug-related violence, or a country plagued by shootings, can drive how the world responds - from media coverage, to business investment, policy decisions and spending by governments and charities.   The trouble is that coming up with accurate figures is hard. Just one consequence is that although murders very probably kill far more people than wars, it is usually combat deaths that tend to get the most attention.   Since the outbreak of war in Syria, the country has been devastated, global powers have been drawn in and huge numbers of people have died.   By February 2016, after almost five years of fighting, the death toll from battle and other causes had reached 470,000, according to the Syrian Center for Policy Research.   Two months later the UN special envoy came up with a lower figure of 400,000 - far higher than the 250,000 the organisation had estimated eighteen months earlier, after which it stopped counting because it didn''t trust the numbers it was getting.   Another estimate came in March 2017, from the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, it suggested that the toll was closer to 320,000 - still horrific, but 150,000 fewer deaths than the upper estimates.   Those given the sad task of trying to count war deaths are forced to rely upon a variety of flawed methods.   In Yemen, for example, the United Nations used reports from hospitals to estimate 10,000 war deaths by January 2017. However, many hospitals have closed and much of the fighting has taken place in rural areas that didn''t have any to start with. Many of the dead are simply taken home by their families and buried. That could mean that 10,000 is a serious underestimate.   Elsewhere, some of the most meticulous researchers insist on being able to name a perpetrator before they count a death and use only English language newspapers, to ensure consistency.   But deaths in messy conflicts where perpetrators are hard to pinpoint, or those which don''t get media attention - a problem in rural areas, or under authoritarian regimes that control the media - can be missed.   There can also be a problem where much of the reporting is not in English. In Colombia, for example, where most coverage is in Spanish, researchers at the Conflict Analysis Resource Center in Bogota estimated that international experts had captured fewer than half the deaths in most years of its guerrilla conflict.   Meanwhile, in all wars, many people die from disease, hunger, and other "indirect causes".   Should these count as war deaths? The World Health Organization found that by August 2017, 2,000 Yemenis had died of cholera. If war hadn''t destroyed hospitals and kept doctors from being paid, many of these deaths might have been prevented.   Researchers at the Small Arms Survey, a think tank in Geneva, suggest that indirect deaths kill three to fifteen times as many people as fighting during conflict - depending largely on levels of development, and whether civilian infrastructure is targeted.   In Ukraine, for example, the UN estimates that 10,000 people were killed in battle by the end of 2016 - on a par with Yemen. But in Ukraine, roads and hospitals still function and a cholera outbreak is unlikely to be very deadly.   By tending to focus on war, the media misses an even more crucial reality: homicides probably kill three to four times more people each year than conflicts.   Between 2007 and 2012, homicides killed an average of 377,000 people a year, while about 70,000 died annually in conflict.   Experts at the Geneva Declaration, one of the few think tanks that counts violence across both warfare and crime, estimate that eight out of 10 such deaths occur outside conflict zones.   The numbers can be jaw-dropping. For instance, in 2015 the Brazilian Forum for Public Security reported more than 58,000 homicides - a year in which the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights counted just over 55,000 deaths in the Syrian war.   Astounding numbers of homicides are found in many other countries, with about 34,000 reported in India, 22,000 in Mexico and 17,000 in Nigeria in 2012, the last year comparable UN data is available.   And the murder of 58 people in a mass shooting in Las Vegas has again highlighted the problem of gun violence in the United States. The US remains an anomaly among similar developed democracies, with a murder rate four to five times as high as Western Europe.   The use of overall numbers rather than a figure which takes into account the size of a country''s population can sometimes make a country appear more dangerous than it is.   After Brazil, which has about 10 times Syria''s population, India has the second largest number of murders most years. But with a population of well over a billion people, its homicide rate is considered low: at 3.5 per 100,000, or about half the world''s average, according to the United Nations Office on Drug Control.   And the Igarape Institute, which begins with UNODC''s numbers but then cross-checks these with local police, morgues, and think tanks for greater accuracy, puts India''s rate at 2.8 per 100,000 - lower than Latvia''s.   Unsurprisingly, homicide statistics are as bad as war data. Most countries count homicides in two places - police stations and morgues.   Researchers tend to trust morgue statistics more because police can be under pressure to keep homicide numbers low, whereas morticians tend to be more removed from political influence. Yet some bodies never make it to morgues, since a murder without a corpse can''t be prosecuted.   Homicide numbers can sometimes be inflated due to poor record-keeping, but more often, countries have an incentive to downplay numbers. And only about half of all countries in the world report any homicide statistics at all.   The United Nations does its best to mathematically model data for the rest, but in places like sub-Saharan Africa, where very few countries report, there is little to go on and a likelihood that available numbers underestimate the effects of war and rapidly growing populations.   Given these problems, any statistic on violent deaths should be treated with caution. But thinking across the boundaries of war and crime can be illuminating, even if numbers are used as rough estimates. The results can be very surprising.   In 2011, for instance, New Orleans'' homicide rate of 57.6 per 100,000 was on par with the rates of homicides and conflict deaths in Afghanistan that year.   Elsewhere, Mexico has struggled with drug-related violence, the number of homicides steadily increasing and - between 2007 and 2014 - reaching 164,000, according to the Mexican government.   That puts it on a par with many wars and exceeds the number of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan during the same period, according to UN and Iraq Body Count figures.   No-one would say that New Orleans or Mexico were at war. But, as with other places experiencing large numbers of violent deaths, the word "peace" doesn''t seem entirely appropriate either. http://bit.ly/2F0NQQi   Non-conflict Armed Violence. (Small Arms Survey)   By far the largest human burden of armed violence is caused by deaths and injuries that occur in non-conflict and non-war settings. Countries such as El Salvador, Jamaica, and South Africa suffer from extremely high recorded levels of homicide, with more deaths each year than in many contemporary wars.   Non-conflict deaths are often distinguished from the deaths that arise from armed conflict based on the organization of the killing. Homicide is usually committed by individuals or small groups, whereas the killing in armed conflict is committed by relatively cohesive groups of up to several hundred members. But there is often little difference in intensity between large-scale criminal violence and low-level armed conflict, and the line between the two is frequently blurred.   Non-conflict-related armed violence includes different dimensions, such as firearm homicides, violence in cities, gendered violent deaths, and the issue of the effectiveness of criminal justice systems.   Approximately 60 per cent of all violent deaths are committed with firearms, with variation from a low of 19 per cent in West and Central Europe to a high of 77 per cent in Central America, based on data from 45 countries. That represents 245,000 firearms deaths per year.   Non-conflict armed violence includes homicides, suicides, extrajudicial killings, and other forms of death or injury, such as those resulting from domestic violence or gender-based armed violence, social cleansing, or disappearances and kidnappings.   http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/armed-violence/non-conflict-armed-violence.html   April 2017   Responding to the murder epidemic in Latin America. (Instituto Igarapé, agencies)   Latin America faces a murder epidemic: every day at least 400 people are violently killed. That amounts to 144,000 homicides a year. Some 2.6 million people were murdered between 2000 and 2016. Youth populations are especially hard hit with a young person dying every 15 minutes. Taken together, Latin America has just 8% of the world’s population but over 38% of its homicides.   Many Latin American countries have levels of violence comparable to war zones in the Middle East and Central Asia, and three-quarters of the homicides in the region are by firearms, significantly above the global average. If conditions remain unchanged, the murder rate could rise from 21 to 35 per 100,000 in 2030.   In order to put a stop to this trend, the Igarapé Institute and Nossas are coordinating a regional homicide reduction campaign with the participation of approximately 30 civil society organizations from 7 countries and the support of multilateral organizations and the Open Society Foundations. The campaign – called Instinct for Life (Instinto de Vida) – launched at the World Economic Forum’s Latin American summit in Buenos Aires in April 2017.   The campaign’s headline goal is to reduce homicide by 50% in 10 years. The campaign will initially focus on the seven countries registering the largest number of violent deaths in Latin America: Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Venezuela. Together, these countries make up 34% of all homicides globally. The benefits of halving the homicide rate in the following decade could be extraordinary, saving around 365,000 lives in just these countries.   In spite of the dire statistics, there are a growing number of examples across the region of countries and cities that have successfully reduced murder. Large cities such as Bogota, Ciudad Juarez, Medellin and São Paulo saw homicide rates decrease by 70% or more over the past decade. Civic leaders – especially mayors – led the charge. They combined visionary planning and hard targets with hot spot policing and social programs targeting areas of concentrated disadvantage and at-risk young people.   According to Illona Szabó de Carvalho, of the Igarapé Institute (Brazil), “getting Latin America’s homicide crisis under control will require investing in a few common-sense strategies. At a minimum, governments, business and civil society groups need to ground their approach on reliable data and solid evidence, focusing on the places, people and behaviors that have the greatest impact on the levels of lethal violence”.   This is because crime clearly tends to concentrate in very specific neighborhoods, to be perpetrated by key demographics (especially men between the ages of 15 and 29) and at certain moments during the day.   Edna Jaime, director of México Evalúa, adds that it is crucial to fully understand that there are multiple causes to lethal violence. “Producing high-quality information on spatial, environmental and social factors is fundamental, as well as generating detailed profiles on the victims and perpetrators. This facilitates the design and development of specific and effective policies that can contribute to the reduction of homicides”, she says.   Verónica Zubillaga, of Reacin (Venezuela), explains that fear can lead populations into supporting heavy-handed law enforcement tactics. “Such measures — such as tough-on-crime policies or the military taking charge of citizen safety — have proved time and time again to be counterproductive strategies”, she asserts.   “The numbers are scary and often prevent us from seeing the true dimension and the seriousness of our situation”, observes Alessandra Orofino, executive director of Nossas (Brazil). “We don’t see the faces in the published reports – only numbers. It is important for civil society to present a unified front, because the murder crisis affects us all. This should be a permanent fight for each and every one of us. We have to urge governments to adopt efficient and effective solutions, and we need a commitment that can address the situation”.   “We need countries and cities suffering from high murder rates to shift the paradigm from accepting the situation as ‘normal’, adds María Victoria Llorente, executive director of the Ideas para la Paz Foundation (FIP), in Colombia. “We have a serious problem that requires concrete, evidence-based measures that account for the local needs and capacities”.   http://igarape.org.br/en/responding-to-the-murder-epidemic-in-latin-america/ http://osf.to/2rxNSK8 Visit the related web page
	It is now two and a half minutes to midnight by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists   It is now two and a half minutes to midnight. For the first time in the 70-year history of the Doomsday Clock, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board has moved the hands of the iconic clock 30 seconds closer to midnight. In another first, the Board has decided to act, in part, based on the words of a single person: Donald Trump, the new President of the United States.   The decision to move the hands of the Doomsday Clock is made by the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientistsin consultation with the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors, which includes 15 Nobel Laureates.   In January 2016, the Doomsday Clock’s minute hand did not change, remaining at three minutes before midnight. The Clock was changed in 2015 from five to three minutes to midnight, the closest it had been since the arms race of the 1980s.   In the statement about the Doomsday Clock, the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board notes: “Over the course of 2016, the global security landscape darkened as the international community failed to come effectively to grips with humanity’s most pressing existential threats, nuclear weapons and climate change … This already-threatening world situation was the backdrop for a rise in strident nationalism worldwide in 2016, including in a US presidential campaign during which the eventual victor, Donald Trump, made disturbing comments about the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons and expressed disbelief in the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change …The board’s decision to move the clock less than a full minute — something it has never before done — reflects a simple reality: As this statement is issued, Donald Trump has been the US president only a matter of days …”   The statement continues: “Just the same, words matter, and President Trump has had plenty to say over the last year. Both his statements and his actions as President-elect have broken with historical precedent in unsettling ways. He has made ill-considered comments about expanding the US nuclear arsenal. He has shown a troubling propensity to discount or outright reject expert advice related to international security, including the conclusions of intelligence experts.   And his nominees to head the Energy Department, and the Environmental Protection Agency dispute the basics of climate science. In short, even though he has just now taken office, the president’s intemperate statements, lack of openness to expert advice, and questionable cabinet nominations have already made a bad international security situation worse.”   In addition to addressing the statements made by President Trump, the Board also expressed concern about the greater global context of nuclear and climate issues:   On nuclear issues, the Board noted: “The United States and Russia—which together possess more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons—remained at odds in a variety of theaters, from Syria to Ukraine to the borders of NATO; both countries continued wide-ranging modernizations of their nuclear forces, and serious arms control negotiations were nowhere to be seen.   North Korea conducted its fourth and fifth underground nuclear tests and gave every indication it would continue to develop nuclear weapons delivery capabilities. Threats of nuclear warfare hung in the background as Pakistan and India faced each other warily across the Line of Control in Kashmir after militants attacked two Indian army bases.”   In surveying the status of climate matters, the Board concluded: “The climate change outlook was somewhat less dismal (in 2016) but only somewhat. In the wake of the landmark Paris climate accord, the nations of the world have taken some actions to combat climate change, and global carbon dioxide emissions were essentially flat in 2016, compared to the previous year.   Still, they have not yet started to decrease; the world continues to warm. Keeping future temperatures at less-than-catastrophic levels requires reductions in greenhouse gas emissions far beyond those agreed to in Paris, yet little appetite for additional cuts was in evidence at the November climate conference in Marrakech.”   Rachel Bronson, executive director and publisher, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: “As we marked the 70th anniversary of the Doomsday Clock, this year’s Clock deliberations felt more urgent than usual. In addition to the existential threats posed by nuclear weapons and climate change, new global realities emerged, as trusted sources of information came under attack, fake news was on the rise, and words were used by a President-elect of the United States in cavalier and often reckless ways to address the twin threats of nuclear weapons and climate change.”   Lawrence Krauss, chair, Bulletin Board of Sponsors, director, Origins Project at Arizona State University, and foundation professor, School of Earth and Space Exploration and Physics Department, Arizona State University, said: “Wise men and women have said that public policy is never made in the absence of politics. But in this unusual political year, we offer a corollary: Good policy takes account of politics but is never made in the absence of expertise. Facts are indeed stubborn things, and they must be taken into account if the future of humanity is to be preserved, long term. Nuclear weapons and climate change are precisely the sort of complex existential threats that cannot be properly managed without access to and reliance on expert knowledge.   In 2016, world leaders not only failed to deal adequately with those threats; they actually increased the risk of nuclear war and unchecked climate change through a variety of provocative statements and actions, including careless rhetoric about the use of nuclear weapons and the wanton defiance of scientific evidence. To step further back from the brink will require leaders of vision and restraint.   President Trump and President Putin can choose to act together as statesmen, or as petulant children, risking our future. We call upon all people to speak out and send a loud message to your leaders so that they do not needlessly threaten your future, and the future of your children.”   Retired Rear Admiral David Titley, Bulletin Science and Security Board; professor of practice, Pennsylvania State University Department of Meteorology, and founding director, Penn State’s Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk, said: “Climate change should not be a partisan issue. The well-established physics of Earth’s carbon cycle is neither liberal nor conservative in character. The planet will continue to warm to ultimately dangerous levels so long as carbon dioxide continues to be pumped into the atmosphere irrespective of political leadership.   The current political situation in the United States is of particular concern.   The Trump administration needs to state clearly and unequivocally that it accepts climate change, caused by human activity, as reality. No problem can be solved unless its existence is first recognized. There are no ‘alternative facts’ here”.   * Complete 18 page statement: http://bit.ly/2jtO76v Visit the related web page
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