Pathology

Sociology

Disease

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Infectious disease (medical specialty)

Criminology

Pandemic

Politics

Algorithm

Political economy

Political science

Economics

Unrest

Social unrest

Armed conflict

Computer science

Development economics

Social conflict

State (computer science)

Medicine

Peace Economics Peace Science and Public Policy

This article examines the impact and repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic on patterns of armed conflict around the world. It argues that there are two main ways in which the pandemic is likely to fuel, rather than mitigate, conflict and engender further violence in conflict-prone countries: (1) the exacerbating effect of COVID-19 on the underlying root causes of conflict and (2) the exploitation of the crisis by governments and non-state actors who have used the coronavirus to gain political advantage and territorial control. The article uses data collected in real-time by the Armed Conflict Location &amp; Event Data Project (ACLED) and the Johns Hopkins University to illustrate the unfolding and spatial distribution of conflict events before and during the pandemic and combine this with three brief case studies of Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Libya. Descriptive evidence shows how levels of violence have remained unabated or even escalated during the first five months of the pandemic and how COVID-19-related social unrest has spread beyond conflict-affected countries.

A Pandemic of Violence? The Impact of COVID-19 on Conflict