Where Data Tells the Story
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Most of Our World in Data's work on war and peace focuses on the people killed directly in the fighting. But war has many other costs: it worsens people’s health, leaves them without work, and pushes them out of their homes.
The chart shows this for the civil war in Syria. Since the war began in 2011, more than 400,000 people have been killed in the fighting. At the same time, annual deaths increased as more people died from other causes. Young children were especially affected: estimates suggest that the number of annual child deaths more than doubled.
The war has also forced millions of people to leave their homes: in total, more than seven million are displaced within Syria, and almost as many are refugees elsewhere.
It also became much harder for people to make a living. Average living standards, measured by GDP per capita, have more than halved since the war began. As a result, poverty and hunger have risen sharply.
These numbers come with uncertainty because conflict makes it hard and dangerous to collect data.
This shows that to understand the costs of war, we need to have a broad perspective and see its impacts on health, displacement, and living standards.