The Threat List

Status:Conflict

The Threat List
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Central AfricaConflictSince 1996Deep-sourcedlow confidence

Eastern DRC Conflict

Decades of overlapping armed conflict in a mineral-rich region, with mass displacement and one of the highest excess-death tolls of the modern era.

Severity score

75.8

Critical · default weighting

Trajectory

Worsening

How this is ranked

What this is

Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has experienced near-continuous armed conflict since the 1990s, involving over 100 armed groups, neighbouring state involvement and competition over cobalt, coltan, gold and tin. The cumulative excess death toll from the Congo wars and their aftermath is one of the highest of any conflict since the Second World War, though the widely cited 5.4 million figure is methodologically contested. The M23 resurgence has driven renewed mass displacement.

Score breakdown

Each factor is a 0–100 relative severity index, not the raw figure or a specific time period. The actual counts and periods are listed under "Standardized Impact" on the right.

Loss of life

90

Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.

Lives negatively impacted

88

People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.

Financial cost

54

Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.

Environmental impact

50

Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.

Trajectory

85

Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.

Recent coverage

Audit trail

Everything this entry has been through — when it was first searched for, queued, reviewed and approved, and how its figures and rank have moved since.

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