A/HRC/49/46 Challenges and Change recommended a minority rights framework to prevent conflicts. 13 The Minorities at Risk Project at the University of Maryland monitored indicators for political discrimination, cultural and economic exclusion and persecution on 283 minority groups around the world and has found a significant link between conflict and those forms of denial of rights.14 25. The trend has not been reversed, and far from it. A significant upsurge in the number of conflicts between 1975 and 2020 has been observed, particularly since 2011. 15 Few conflicts today are between States: the largest number are internal, often known as “Statebased” violence or “non-State” violence, both categories of which often involve at least one ethnic, religious or linguistic minority, as do some of the conflicts described as “one-sided” violence. As reported by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 16 armed conflicts occurred in at least 39 States in 2020 (5 more than in 2019), with most taking place within a single country between government forces and one or more non-State groups, usually a minority. Even in the case of the two armed inter-State conflicts, namely the ongoing border clashes between India and Pakistan, and the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan for control of Nagorno-Karabakh, the latter also involves control over a territory directly involving a minority population – despite this fact not generally being acknowledged in conflict data. 26. Exclusion and discrimination involving minorities, or of growing group inequalities, as prime drivers of conflicts have, unfortunately, been little studied in data-collection processes. Disturbingly – and counterintuitively, if the prevention of conflicts is supposed to be a priority – initiatives such as the Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity, the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, and the Minorities at Risk Project, which a decade ago provided disaggregated data on the ethnic dimensions (including along the lines of culture, religion and language) of conflicts, and even the UNDP Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, are no longer in operation.17 Data in most other peace or conflict databases are no longer specifically disaggregated by the ethnic dimensions of conflicts. Information is more generally organized according to the issues involved, such as political participation or control, economic and social inequalities, and identity-related claims. They are much less likely to refer to the subjects of the conflicts themselves, beyond distinguishing between internal conflicts and conflicts between States, or among State-based, non-State based and one-sided violence conflicts. 27. Nevertheless, more recent data from a variety of sources suggest that many in the international community have not been focusing on the main drivers of conflict, which can be described as follows: (a) Most conflicts today are intra-State rather than inter-State 18 and involve an ethnic, linguistic or religious minority;19 (b) The majority of situations in 2018 involving instability, past genocides, potential crimes against humanity and similar threats were against groups that can be described as minorities;20 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 6 A/59/565 and A/59/565/Corr.1, part two, para. 94. A/HRC/16/45, para. 39. Uppsala Conflict Data Program, “Number of conflicts 1975–2020”. Available at https://ucdp.uu.se/. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook 2021: Armaments, Disarmaments and International Security (Oxford University Press, 2021). The Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery has been replaced by the Crisis Bureau, where prevention has a negligible visible presence compared to post-conflict efforts. A/75/982. Ralph Sundberg, Kristine Eck and Joakim Kreutz, “Introducing the UCDP Non-State Conflict dataset”, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 49, No. 2 (March 2012), pp. 351–362; and World Bank Group Strategy for Fragility, Conflict, and Violence 2020–2025, World Bank Group (2020). Minority Rights Group International, Peoples under Threat database. Available at http://peoplesunderthreat.org/.