Even at high homicide rates (e.g. Russia) it would take many many years to add up to even a small war’s casualties.
False, unless one sets an unusually high bar for an armed conflict to qualify as a “war”.
Russia had “over 12,300 homicides” in 2013.* For comparison, about 900 people died in the Falklands War; about 1,400 in the 2006 Lebanon War; and the 1999 Kargil War between India & Pakistan killed 900–5,600 people, depending on whose counts you trust.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimehas data for 2008–2012 as well, which allows some more interesting comparisons. In 2008 Russian police counted 16,617 murders, or about 60× as many deaths as in the war between Russia (& South Ossetia & Abkhazia) and Georgia in the same year.
The numbers add up quickly over multiple years. Lumping together the 2008–2013 counts gives about 86,400 recorded murders. This matches International Crisis Group’s estimate of deaths in the Eritrean-Ethiopian War (one of the few unambiguous examples of a recent interstate war arising from a territorial dispute), and beats (for example) the Croatian and Kosovan wars of Yugoslav succession put together (16,000 & 17,000 deaths respectively). Wait another year and the running murder total’ll match the war in Bosnia & Herzegovina.
* Edit to add: the link says “homicides and attempted murders reported” but I’m pretty sure it only counts successful homicides, since the “12,300″ number’s similar to the UNODC numbers for preceding years, and the UNODC counts are of intentional homicide, “defined as unlawful death purposely inflicted on a person by another person”.
False, unless one sets an unusually high bar for an armed conflict to qualify as a “war”.
Russia had “over 12,300 homicides” in 2013.* For comparison, about 900 people died in the Falklands War; about 1,400 in the 2006 Lebanon War; and the 1999 Kargil War between India & Pakistan killed 900–5,600 people, depending on whose counts you trust.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has data for 2008–2012 as well, which allows some more interesting comparisons. In 2008 Russian police counted 16,617 murders, or about 60× as many deaths as in the war between Russia (& South Ossetia & Abkhazia) and Georgia in the same year.
The numbers add up quickly over multiple years. Lumping together the 2008–2013 counts gives about 86,400 recorded murders. This matches International Crisis Group’s estimate of deaths in the Eritrean-Ethiopian War (one of the few unambiguous examples of a recent interstate war arising from a territorial dispute), and beats (for example) the Croatian and Kosovan wars of Yugoslav succession put together (16,000 & 17,000 deaths respectively). Wait another year and the running murder total’ll match the war in Bosnia & Herzegovina.
* Edit to add: the link says “homicides and attempted murders reported” but I’m pretty sure it only counts successful homicides, since the “12,300″ number’s similar to the UNODC numbers for preceding years, and the UNODC counts are of intentional homicide, “defined as unlawful death purposely inflicted on a person by another person”.