Poverty and Violent Conflict - Categories Of Violent Conflict

There are four different types of violent conflict:

• Internal conflict occurs within a single country, such as a civil war or a conflict over the use and ownership of natural resources. Table 9.1 lists examples of such conflicts dating from 1949, including wars fought over control of oil, timber, crops, and gems.
• Internationalized internal conflict is characterized by the intervention of foreign nations in a dispute between FIGURE 9.1 Spending priorities of low human development countries recently experiencing conflict, 2003 "Figure 5.3. Spending Priorities of Low Human Development Countries Recently Experiencing Conflict," in Human Development Report 2005, United Nations Development Programme, 2005, http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005/pdf/HDR05_complete.pdf (accessed April 10, 2006)warring factions within another country. The war in Bosnia in the 1990s is an example of this type of conflict.
• Interstate conflict is war between or among nations.
• Extrasystemic conflict occurs between the government of one nation and a nongovernment group in another nation.

Some researchers distinguish between war and conflict by saying that more than 1,000 people per year die in a true war. For example, in Armed Conflict 1946–99: A New Dataset (February 2001, http://www.isanet.org/archive/npg.html), Nils Petter Gleditsch and his colleagues state that the violence in Northern Ireland that began in 1969 qualifies as a conflict rather than as a war because there were more than 1,000 "battle deaths" throughout the events but not more than 1,000 per year. In addition, situations that have or can become violent, such as a regime change or oppression of a minority group, are also considered conflict.