By Jennifer Dathan on 3 Dec 2025 Since the fall of Assad almost a year ago now, many countries hosting Syrian refugees have pushed for Syrians to return to Syria. Some countries have introduced...
Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) Updates
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Joint Civil Society Statement on Incendiary Weapons at the UN First Committee
Delivered by Human Rights Watch Thank you. I am pleased to deliver this joint statement on behalf of 35 civil society organizations. The civilian deaths and devastation caused by the firebombings of...
Ukraine’s other war: the battle against drug-resistant bacteria
By Iain Overton on 1 Oct 2025 Europe is watching a perfect storm unfold on its doorstep. Ukraine’s fertile black earth, enriched by centuries of manure, is teeming with microbes. To add to this,...
World + 1 more
From aid to arms: the UK’s shifting footprint in Africa
For decades the UK held up its overseas aid budget as a symbol of moral authority and soft power. That narrative is now at risk. Development spending is being pared back, diverted or rebranded for...
Living under armed drones: an ethnography of terror and survival in Northeastern Syria
By India Ledeganck on 8 Sep 2025 In northeastern Syria, Turkish aerial attacks using armed drones entirely shape the daily lives of the region’s inhabitants. Based on three years of ethnographic...
Frontline sappers: Ukraine’s women take on the world’s most mined fields
It’s 6 a.m. in Chuhuiv Raion, an agricultural region in eastern Kharkiv oblast and 40 kilometres from the frontline, when a Ukrainian demining team receives its final safety briefing. They’re now set...
Ukraine: AOAV explosive violence data on harm to civilians (Last updated: 10 July 2025)
Total civilian casualties from explosive violence*: 38,339 – Killed: 8,591 – Injured: 29,748 Last updated: 10 July 2025 *This figure refers to the number of civilians killed or injured by explosive...
Collateral morality: on the killing of Dr Alaa al-Najjar’s nine children and the political bankruptcy it reveals
By Iain Overton In Gaza, death has become so routine that even its most obscene iterations barely make the news. But the airstrike that killed nine of Dr Alaa al-Najjar’s ten children broke through...
oPt + 15 more
Explosive Violence Monitor 2024
This report presents the findings of global explosive violence patterns in 2024. It constitutes the fourteenth consecutive year of Action on Armed Violence’s (AOAV) Explosive Violence Monitoring...
Myanmar: At least 24 civilians killed, including 22 children and 102 injured by junta air strike on school in Depayin township, Sagaing
By Niamh Gillen In the morning of Monday 12 May, the Myanmar military junta carried out an airstrike in the village of Oe Htein Kwin, within the Depayin township, in Myanmar’s Sagaing state. The...
Starvation as strategy: the siege of Gaza should be a stain on all our consciences
By Iain Overton on 14 May 2025 There is no moral defence for the starvation of children. None at all. And if you think you can come up with one, then – rest assured – you are in the realms of...
Nigeria + 5 more
The war without front lines: how IEDs are the greatest existential threats to some States in West Africa today
By Iain Overton on 9 May 2025 There is a quiet war spreading across West Africa. It has no fixed front lines, no tanks crushing border posts, no globally televised declarations. But it is as deadly...
Burkina Faso + 7 more
Point-Blank: Weapons Seized from Salafi-Jihadist Groups in the Central Sahel - Issue 02
Guns rarely die. They just change hands There’s a bitter truth in warzones that should be read out to the men in suits who approve arms deals and the generals who sign off on weapon transfers. Once a...
Yemen + 1 more
Civilian harm in Yemen: US strikes on migrant detention centre raise fresh concerns over international law compliance
On 28 April 2025, a US airstrike reportedly struck a migrant detention centre in Saada, northern Yemen, killing over 68 civilians and injuring dozens more. According to Human Rights Watch, the...
Sudan: At least 15 civilians killed and 25 injured by RSF shelling on Abu Shouk camp in El Fasher, North Darfur
On Thursday 10 April, Sudanese paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) carried out artillery shelling on the Abu Shouk displacement camp in the city of El Fasher within North Darfur,...
When humanitarians become targets: the unacceptable violence against aid workers by the state of Israel
The killing of eight Palestinian aid workers from the Red Crescent Society in Gaza last week is not only a tragedy — it is a travesty of international humanitarian law. Their bodies, found buried...
Niger + 5 more
In Gadez’s desert of despair: have Europe’s border policies turned refugees fleeing conflict into political pawns, forced to live in inhumane conditions?
In the remote city of Agadez, Niger, refugees from across East and Central Africa – mainly Sudanese fleeing the war there, but also Eritrean, Chadian, Cameroonian and Central African – have been...
Myanmar: Junta continues airstrikes days after 7.7 magnitude earthquake devastates country
Myanmar’s military junta has continued its bombardment of several areas of the country, despite the nation being struck by a 7.7 magnitude earthquake on 28 March 2025, killing at least 2,700 people...
Sudan: At least 100 civilians killed by Sudanese Armed Forces air strike on El Fasher market, North Darfur
By Niamh Gillen on 26 Mar 2025 On Tuesday 25th March, an air strike carried out by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) targeted the Tura market, 45km north of El Fasher, in North Darfur state, killing at...
The Hierarchy of Explosive Violence: A Decade of Global Impact
By Niamh Gillen The global impact of explosive weapons over the past decade reveals a stark hierarchy in lethality, with certain methods of attack proving far more devastating than others. Between...