The Human Security Brief 2006 updates the 2005 Human Security Report's conflict trend data and analyzes the findings of two recently released datasets that track trends in war terminations and organized violence against civilians.

The new data indicate that the post-Cold War decline in armed conflicts and related fatalities reported last year has continued, with Sub-Saharan Africa seeing the greatest decrease in political violence.

Other encouraging trends include continuing declines in the number of genocides and other mass slaughters of civilians, and a drop in refugee numbers and military coups.

But some of the other findings are far from positive. Four of the world's six regions have experienced increased numbers of conflicts since 2002, the last five years have seen a huge spike in the estimated death toll from terrorism, while negotiated settlements, which are responsible for an increasing proportion of conflict terminations, have worryingly high failure rates.