Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) records incidents of explosive violence as they occur around the world. Since 1 October 2010 AOAV has used English-language media sources to capture information on attacks, including on the number of casualties and the weapon type used.
This month there were more than 3,000 casualties of explosive violence (people killed and injured). Civilians made up 84% of all the people who were recorded killed or injured around the world by explosive weapons.
This month’s updated can be seen here
Action on Armed Violence is a founding-member of the International Network on Explosive Weapons (INEW), which calls for immediate action to prevent human suffering from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas. Explosive weapons project blast and fragmentation effects around a point of detonation. The use of such weapons in populated areas causes a predictable and preventable pattern of harm for civilians. AOAV data shows that when explosive weapons are used in populated areas, civilians are the overwhelming majority of casualties. As such, AOAV calls on all users of explosive weapons to refrain from using them in populated areas.
AOAV’s Explosive Violence Monitor
Methodology: Information is gathered from English-language news sources on incidents of explosive violence with at least one reported casualty. AOAV uses an RSS reader to scan Google news for key terms which relate to explosive weapon use. Information is extracted on: the date, time, and location of the incident; the number and status of people killed and injured; the weapon type; the reported user and target; the detonation method and whether displacement or damage to the location was reported. AOAV does not attempt to comprehensively capture all incidents of explosive violence around the world, instead this data in intended to serve as a useful indicator of the scale and pattern of harm. Direct casualties are just one aspect of the impact of explosive weapons in populated areas. Damage to civilian infrastructure, psychological and socio-economic impacts on individuals and communities, and the danger of UXO are seldom reported in news sources.
For the latest analysis and research of developments in explosive violence go to:
Manufactured Explosive Weapons
[1] Actors are defined as civilians if they are not identifiable in reports either as armed actors or security personnel.
[2] The number of casualties from explosive violence in Syria is significantly under-reported, owing to the nature of news-source reporting from the conflict. More than half of the incidents in Syria over the whole of 2013 were reported without any information on civilian injuries (52%) while less than a quarter (23%) of incidents in Iraq had no reported civilian injuries.
[3] Henry Dodd, “Data shows Wednesday’s bomb attack on Islamabad market part of a bloody pattern,” Action on Armed Violence, 11 April 2014, https://aoav.org.uk/2014/data-shows-wednesdays-bomb-attack-islamabad-market-part-bloody-pattern/ (accessed 16 May 2014).
[4] Omer Farooq Khan, “23 killed, 120 injured in Pakistan bomb blast,” TNN posted in The Times of India, 9 April 2014, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/23-killed-120-injured-in-Pakistan-bomb-blast/articleshow/33501186.cms (accessed 16 May 2014).
[5] Robert Perkins, “Syrian children killed in school bombing,” Action on Armed Violence, 30 April 2014, https://aoav.org.uk/2014/syrian-children-killed-school-bombing/ (accessed 16 May 2014).
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