The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) is a disaggregated conflict analysis and crisis mapping project. ACLED is the highest quality, most widely used, real time data and analysis source on political violence and protest in the developing world
The African Union (AU) is a continental body consisting of the 55 member states that make up the countries of the African Continent. It was officially launched in 2002 as a successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU, 1963-1999).
Following adoption of the Alexandria Protocol in 1944, the Arab League was founded on 22 March 1945. It aimed to be a regional organisation of Arab states with a focus to developing the economy, resolving disputes and coordinating political aims. Other countries later joined the league.
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
The idea of APEC was firstly publicly broached by former Prime Minister of Australia Bob Hawke during a speech in Seoul, Korea, on 31 January 1989. Ten months later, 12 Asia-Pacific economies met in Canberra, Australia, to establish APEC. The founding members were Australia; Brunei Darussalam; Canada; Indonesia; Japan; Korea; Malaysia; New Zealand; the Philippines; Singapore; Thailand; and the United States.
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, was established on 8 August 1967 in Bangkok, Thailand, with the signing of the ASEAN Declaration (Bangkok Declaration) by the Founding Fathers of ASEAN, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
The Asian Development Bank was conceived in the early 1960s as a financial institution that would be Asian in character and foster economic growth and cooperation in one of the poorest regions in the world.
Asia Times Holdings Limited is a media conglomerate with operations on several continents, including the Asia Times, the English-language publication launched in 1995. Since its early days in Bangkok, Asia Times has been among the most credible names in news in the world’s most populous region. What began as a printed broadsheet distributed continent-wide, in 1998 became the world’s first fully digital news publication.
BRICS is an informal group of states comprising the Federative Republic of Brazil, the Russian Federation, the Republic of India, the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of South Africa.
Welcome to the Correlates of War (COW) project homepage. COW seeks to facilitate the collection, dissemination, and use of accurate and reliable quantitative data in international relations. Key principles of the project include a commitment to standard scientific principles of replication, data reliability, documentation, review, and the transparency of data collection procedures.
The Diplomat is the premier international current-affairs magazine for the Asia-Pacific region. Since its launch in 2002, The Diplomat has been dedicated to quality analysis and commentary on events occurring in Asia and around the world. The Diplomat reaches an influential audience of commentators, policymakers and academics with its in-depth treatment of regional issues.
Data on Armed Conflict and Security
Event Data on Armed Conflict and Security. The Event Data on Armed Conflict and Security Project (EDACS) compiles and analyzes spatially and temporally disaggregated data on the use of violence in the context of civil wars in Sub-Sahara-Africa, starting with the end of the cold war until 2009.
Democracy in Africa is dedicated to building a bridge between academics, policymakers, practitioners and citizens. We focus in particular on encouraging academics to share their work on African politics in accessible formats, encouraging engagement and wide-ranging debate.
The Economist was established in 1843 by James Wilson, a hatmaker from the small Scottish town of Hawick, to campaign against the protectionist Corn Laws. The tariffs were repealed in 1846 but the newspaper lived on as “a political, literary, and general newspaper”, never abandoning its belief in free trade, internationalism and minimum interference by government, especially in the affairs of the market. (It did, however, abandon the Oxford comma.)
From resistance fighters to lawyers and parliamentarians, the EU pioneers were a diverse group of people who held the same ideals: a peaceful, united and prosperous Europe. Beyond the pioneers described below, many others have worked tirelessly towards and inspired the European project. This section on the EU’s pioneers is therefore a work in progress.
Eurostat is the statistical office of the European Union situated in Luxembourg. Its mission is to provide high quality statistics for Europe. While fulfilling its mission, Eurostat promotes the following values: respect and trust, fostering excellence, promoting innovation, service orientation, professional independence.
E-International Relations () is the world’s leading open access website for students and scholars of international politics, featuring high quality scholarly content and student-facing resources. The website was established in November 2007, and is recommended by leading academics and practitioners from around the world. We reach over 3 million unique readers per year.
ETH Zurich Centre for Security Studies Database
The purpose of the Resources section of the CSS website is outreach - i.e., it features the analyses of CSS experts, external partners and like-minded institutions in order to promote dialogue on international relations and security-related issues. CSS Resources is the successor to the International Relations and Security Network (ISN).
The Environment Statistics Section of the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) is engaged in the development of methodology, data collection, capacity development, and coordination in the fields of environmental statistics and indicators.
The EIU Democracy Index provides a snapshot of the state of world democracy for 165 independent states and two territories. The Democracy Index is based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture. Based on their scores on 60 indicators within these categories, each country is then itself classified as one of four types of regime: full democracy; flawed democracy; hybrid regime; and authoritarian regime.
Over the course of almost half a century of award-winning journalism, design, and the presentation of important new ideas from the world’s leading thinkers, Foreign Policy has established itself at the forefront of media organizations devoted to the coverage of global affairs.
Food and Agriculture Statistics
Food and AgricultureOrganization (FAO) Database is a specialised unit of the UN FAO that provide updated data on global food security.
No other database can provide the depth of data that Global Financial Data offers. The GFDFinaeon platform add new ways to search for, group and analysed data. Over the years thousands of analysts, researchers, and scholars from all types of backgrounds have used GFD to analyse the markets and to complete their research.
The Global Financial Development Database is an extensive dataset of financial system characteristics for 206 economies. The database includes measures of (1) size of financial institutions and markets (financial depth), (2) degree to which individuals can and do use financial services (access), (3) efficiency of financial intermediaries and markets in intermediating resources and facilitating financial transactions (efficiency), and (4) stability of financial institutions and markets.
Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect was established in February 2008 to promote universal acceptance and effective operational implementation of the norm of the "Responsibility to Protect" populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
This site provides offline tools and online applications for data analysis and visualization, especially for those data included in the Global Environmental Database (GED) at the Center for Global Environmental Research (CGER). The online trend analysis application let users quickly extract seasonal variations and inter-annual trends from their time series observations.
Global Security is an independent resource on military guide, daily global news brief, space exploration, world-wide elections, intelligence and espionage, weapon of mass destruction, and situation and expert reports.
The International Center for Transitional Justice
The International Center for Transitional Justice works for justice in countries that have endured massive human rights abuses under repression and in conflict. We work with victims, civil society groups, national and international organizations to ensure redress for victims and to help prevent atrocities from happening again.
International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect
The International Coalition For The Responsibility To Protect (ICRtoP) brings together NGOs from all regions of the world to strengthen normative consensus for RtoP, further the understanding of the norm, push for strengthened capacities to prevent and halt genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and mobilize NGOs to push for action to save lives in RtoP country-specific situations.
An international consortium of more than 750 academic institutions and research organizations, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for the social science research community. ICPSR maintains a data archive of more than 250,000 files of research in the social and behavioral sciences. It hosts 21 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.
International Debt Statistics (IDS), successor to Global Development Finance and World Debt Tables, is designed to respond to user demand for timely, comprehensive data on trends in external debt in low- and middle-income countries. The World Bank’s Debtor Reporting System (DRS), from which the aggregate and country tables presented in this report are drawn, was established in 1951. World Debt Tables, the first publication that included DRS external debt data, appeared in 1973.
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
Work of the ICRC is based on the Geneva Conventions of 1949, their Additional Protocols, its Statutes those of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and the resolutions of the International Conferences of the Red Cross and Red Crescent. The ICRC is an independent, neutral organization ensuring humanitarian protection and assistance for victims of war and armed violence. It takes action in response to emergencies and promotes respect for international humanitarian law and its implementation in national law.
International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IIDEA)
We advance democracy worldwide, as a universal human aspiration and an enabler of sustainable development, through support to the building, strengthening and safeguarding of democratic political institutions and processes at all levels.
International Labour Organization (ILO)
The only tripartite U.N. agency, since 1919 the ILO brings together governments, employers and workers of 187 member States , to set labour standards, develop policies and devise programmes promoting decent work for all women and men.
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an organization of 189 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world. Created in 1945, the IMF is governed by and accountable to the 189 countries that make up its near-global membership.
International Organization of Migration (IOM)
Established in 1951, IOM is the leading inter-governmental organization in the field of migration and works closely with governmental, intergovernmental and non-governmental partners.
International Rescue Committee (IRC)
The International Rescue Committee responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover and gain control of their future. In more than 40 countries and in 25 U.S. cities, our dedicated teams provide clean water, shelter, health care, education and empowerment support to refugees and displaced people.
This blog is about two things: competing conceptions and ideas of justice as well as the challenges of pursuing justice in conflict. Justice no longer follows in the wake of peace. It is pursued while violent political conflicts are ongoing in places like Darfur, Sierra Leone and Yugoslavia. This presents many challenges for achieving international criminal justice. At the same time, there are conflicting ideas of what justice is. Justice is not a monolithic entity as much as a moving target. One’s idea of justice is unlikely to be that of another.
The National Bureau of Economic Research
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals. NBER-affiliated researchers study a wide range of topics and they employ many different methods in their work. Key focus areas include developing new statistical measurements, estimating quantitative models of economic behavior, and analyzing the effects of public policies.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is an international alliance that consists of 29 member states from North America and Europe. It was established at the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4 April 1949. Article Five of the treaty states that if an armed attack occurs against one of the member states, it shall be considered an attack against all members, and other members shall assist the attacked member, with armed forces if necessary.
The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is the biggest forum for political coordination and consultation after and within the United Nations, composed by 120 Member States from the developing world. There are also 17 countries and 10 International Organizations that hold an Observer status.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
OPEC’s formation by five oil-producing developing countries in Baghdad in September 1960 occurred at a time of transition in the international economic and political landscape, with extensive decolonisation and the birth of many new independent states in the developing world. The international oil market was dominated by the “Seven Sisters” multinational companies and was largely separate from that of the former Soviet Union (FSU) and other centrally planned economies (CPEs).
openDemocracy is an independent global media platform publishing up to 60 articles a week and attracting over 8 million visits per year. Through reporting and analysis of social and political issues, openDemocracy seeks to challenge power and encourage democratic debate across the world. With human rights as our central guiding focus, we ask tough questions about freedom, justice and democracy.
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
The OECD provides a forum in which governments can work together to share experiences and seek solutions to common problems. We work with governments to understand what drives economic, social and environmental change. We measure productivity and global flows of trade and investment. We analyse and compare data to predict future trends. We set international standards on a wide range of things, from agriculture and tax to the safety of chemicals.
OEF Research – Informing Change for Peace
OEF Research believes that policy and practice reflect the quality of available information. We promote empirically-informed research developed using methodologically rigorous approaches as a tool for policy making in peace, security, and good governance. We believe in analyzing evidence using both quantitative and qualitative best practices.
Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is the second largest inter-governmental organization after the United Nations with a membership of 57 states spread over four continents. The Organization is the collective voice of the Muslim world. It endeavours to safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony among various people of the world.
On the closely integrated website SDG-Tracker.org we present the data and research on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In 2015, all countries in the world signed up to reach the SDGs by 2030. We built this site to track progress towards them, allowing all of us to hold governments to account. Our SDG-Tracker is the only publication that presents all the latest available data on the 232 SDG-Indicators with which the 17 Goals are assessed.
The Polity IV dataset covers all major, independent states in the global system over the period 1800-2017 (i.e., states with a total population of 500,000 or more in the most recent year; currently 167 countries). With the support of the Political Instability Task Force, the Polity IV Project has been transformed into a living data collection effort, meaning that it constantly monitors regime changes in all major countries and provides annual assessments of regime authority characteristics, changes and data updates.
The Penn World Table provides purchasing power parity and national income accounts converted to international prices for 189 countries for some or all of the years 1950-2007. The European Union or the OECD provide more detailed purchasing power and real product estimates for their countries and the World Bank makes current price estimates for most PWT countries at the GDP level.
Paul Hensel’s International Relations Data Site
This site includes seven pages of links to on-line data resources for the serious international relations scholar, as well as the introduction page that you are currently reading. These pages are meant to include the most useful data sources on processes of international conflict and cooperation, as well as data covering international economic, environmental, political, and social data and data on similar topics for the United States.
Political Violence at a Glance
Analysis comes from a distinguished team of experts from universities including American University, BYU, Columbia, Denver, Georgetown, Maryland, Michigan, Princeton, Tufts, UCLA, UCSD, Wisconsin, and Yale. The goal is to anticipate the questions you have about violence happening around the world and to offer you simple, straight-forward analysis before anyone else does. No jargon. No lingo. Just insightful content.
ReliefWeb is the leading humanitarian information source on global crises and disasters. It is a specialized digital service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Reporters Without Borders (RWB), or Reporters Sans Fontieres (RSF), is an international non-profit, non-governmental organization that promotes and defends freedom of information and freedom of the press. The organization, with a head office in Paris, France, has consultant status at the United Nations.
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is a permanent intergovernmental international organisation, the creation of which was announced on 15 June 2001 in Shanghai (China) by the Republic of Kazakhstan, the People's Republic of China, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tajikistan, and the Republic of Uzbekistan. It was preceded by the Shanghai Five mechanism.
Saferworld has been preventing violent conflict and building safer lives for over 28 years.Launched in Bristol, UK, in 1989, Saferworld began life as a politically-independent research organisation. In the 1990s we pioneered work for more effective arms controls, and we also began examining the broader elements underlying conflict – such as governance, power, marginalisation, access to resources and development. Our guiding principle – which remains to this day – was that people should be at the heart of all responses to conflict.
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Database is an independent resource on global security, covering Arms Transfers Database, Arm Industry Database, Multilateral Peace Operations, Military Expenditure, Arm Embargoes, Arm Exports, and Global Arms Trade.
Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR)
The Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR for its Spanish initials) is a regional integration process, initially established by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, and subsequently joined by Venezuela and Bolivia* -the latter still complying with the accession procedure.
Free access to detailed global trade data. UN Comtrade is a repository of official international statistics and relevant analytical tables. All data is accessible through API.
Free access to all data and statistics produced and published by the UN.
UN Dispatch is a site providing commentary and coverage on the UN and UN-related issues. UN Dispatch’s intended purpose is to:
UN Department of Peace Operations
DPO provides political and executive direction to UN peacekeeping operations around the world and maintains contact with the Security Council, troop and financial contributors, and parties to the conflict in the implementation of Security Council mandates.
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN Human Rights) Database provide plenty of resources on global human rights reports and activities.
The human security approach is a proven analytical and planning framework that supports more comprehensive and preventive responses by the United Nations, cutting across sectors, developing contextually relevant solutions, and adopting partnerships to help realise a world free from fear, want and indignity.
UNICEF works in 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, to defend their rights, and to help them fulfil their potential, from early childhood through adolescence. And we never give up.
The Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) is an intergovernmental advisory body that supports peace efforts in conflict affected countries and is a key addition to the capacity of the International Community in the broad peace agenda. The PBC is composed by 31 Member States, elected from the General Assembly, the Security Council, and the Economic and Social Council. The top financial contributing countries and the top troop contributing countries to the United Nations system are also members.
Founded in 1944, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development—soon called the World Bank—has expanded to a closely associated group of five development institutions. Originally, its loans helped rebuild countries devastated by World War II. In time, the focus shifted from reconstruction to development, with a heavy emphasis on infrastructure such as dams, electrical grids, irrigation systems, and roads.
DataBank is an analysis and visualisation tool that contains collections of time series data on a variety of topics. You can create your own queries; generate tables, charts, and maps; and easily save, embed, and share them. Watch the tutorial and read the FAQs. Enjoy using DataBank and let us know what you think!
The World Factbook provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities. Our reference tab includes: maps of the major world regions, as well as Flags of the World, a physical Map of the World, a Political Map of the World, a World Oceans map, and a Standard Time Zones of the World map.
WHO began when our Constitution came into force on 7 April 1948 – a date we now celebrate every year as World Health Day. We are now more than 7000 people from more than 150 countries working in 150 country offices, in 6 regional offices and at our headquarters in Geneva.
There are a number of ways of looking at the World Trade Organization. It is an organization for trade opening. It is a forum for governments to negotiate trade agreements. It is a place for them to settle trade disputes. It operates a system of trade rules. Essentially, the WTO is a place where member governments try to sort out the trade problems they face with each other.
As a child-focused agency committed to reaching the world’s most vulnerable children, we asked ourselves two questions: Where in the world is the worst place for children to grow up? and what should we do in these places to impact children more beneficially?
Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem)
Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) is a new approach to conceptualizing and measuring democracy. We provide a multidimensional and disaggregated dataset that reflects the complexity of the concept of democracy as a system of rule that goes beyond the simple presence of elections. The V-Dem project distinguishes between five high-level principles of democracy: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian, and collects data to measure these principles.