Uppsala Conflict Data Program

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) is a data collection project on organized violence housed at Uppsala University in Sweden that has been collecting information on armed conflict since 1946 and making it publicly available through its annual report, States in Armed Conflict. Beginning in Since 2004, the constantly-updated UCDP is also publicly available. The UCDP collects both quantitative and qualitative data on organized violence (e.g., fatality statistics, georeferenced event data, and armed actor and conflict descriptions) that is used by social science researchers, journalists, and policymakers.

The UCDP began recording information on ongoing violent conflicts in the 1970s. It became clear that more systematic and global data on armed conflicts was necessary for conducting research in the expanding academic discipline of peace and conflict studies.

Initially, the program collected data only on so-called "armed conflicts", defined as fighting exceeding 25 battle-related deaths between two actors of which at least one was a state. In later years, the data gathering grew, and the program also began collecting data on "non-state conflicts" (where neither party was a state) and "one-sided violence" (where an organized group attacked unarmed civilians).

The UCDP's data is published annually in such publications as the and the Journal of Peace Research. The UCDP also makes its data publicly available through its website and in its annual publication, States in Armed Conflict.

The UCDP is located at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research of Uppsala University in Sweden. The program is led by the Dag Hammarskjöld Professor of Peace and Conflict Research, Peter Wallensteen, and employs approximately 15 research assistants and researchers. A number of scholars and Ph.D. candidates are also attached to the program and tasked with carrying out research for the collection of conflict data. In addition to collecting data, the program disseminates knowledge on trends and dynamics of armed conflict to the public via lectures at academic and government forums.