A staggering 33,846 civilians were killed or injured in armed violence amid global conflict in 2023, according to Action on Armed Violence (AOAV)—and that's the highest number since the monitoring group started keeping records in 2010. It's also a 62% increase over the year prior, the Guardian reports. The number of civilian fatalities in 2023—15,305—was an increase of 122% over the previous year, the BBC reports. The AOAV report states that casualties related to the Israel-Hamas war account for 37% of total casualties last year, but notes that "This is likely an underestimation of the total harm, as AOAV's methodology only captures discrete injurious incidents as reported in English language media."
Even without the casualties in Gaza, the organization says, 2023 was on track to be worse than 2022 due to ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar, and Syria. Last year's total, in fact, was higher than that reported even during the peak of the Syrian civil war and the early years of the Western fight against the Islamic State, when the annual total regularly broke 30,000. The monitoring group tracks explosive violence, meaning harm from attacks including airstrikes, artillery attacks, and bombs, and this year, it found that state actors were responsible for 77% of those casualties. Stabbings, shootings, and other forms of violence are not counted in the total. (More civilian casualties stories.)
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