Peace and Conflict in TIPCS's 13 Countries: a regional outlook and indicator framework

1. Context and why it matters now

The thirteen countries where TIPCS has offices (Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Mauritania, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Türkiye, Jordan, Iraq, Kenya and Italy) include some of the most violent settings in the world, some of the most stable, and several that are neither. The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) reports in the 2026 Global Peace Index (GPI) that global peacefulness has deteriorated for the 12th consecutive year, that violent conflict deaths reached just over 181,000 in 2025, and that the Middle East and North Africa remains the least peaceful of its eight regions [1]. The same report records the collapse of the ruling regime in Syria in December 2024, a fragile ceasefire in Gaza in October 2025, renewed hostilities in Lebanon in early 2026, and the Iran war that began in late February 2026, which it only partly captures [1].

Published indices measure different things, follow different calendars and are rarely read side by side. This report assembles them for the thirteen countries, using the latest edition available on 26 October 2026: the 2026 GPI, published in June 2026, which supersedes the 2025 edition [1]; the INFORM Risk Index mid-2026 release, version 0.7.3 of 1 September 2026 [2]; the Fragile States Index (FSI) 2024 edition, published in February 2025, the most recent edition located on the publisher's site [3]; the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset (GED) version 26.1, covering events to 31 December 2025 [4]; UNHCR statistics for end-2025 [5]; Freedom House's Freedom in the World 2026 [6, 13]; the UNDP Human Development Report 2025, whose Human Development Index (HDI) refers to 2023 [14]; and World Bank GDP per capita [15] and Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) for 2025 [12]. ACLED event data are not used, because access requires a registered account [16].

The report separates documented facts, attributed to their source, from interpretation and from the proposal in the section 'What TIPCS proposes'. Figures are quoted as the source gives them, with year and geography; sums, counts and correlations marked as calculated by TIPCS are TIPCS arithmetic on published data; 'n/a' means that no comparable figure was verified. Names follow United Nations usage.

2. What the evidence says: theory and literature on conflict transformation

Conflict as a structure in motion: Galtung, Lederach and Mitchell

Miall's review in the Berghof Handbook presents conflict transformation as an approach that aims at 'transforming the relationships, interests, discourses and, if necessary, the very constitution of society that supports the continuation of violent conflict' [10]. In his account of Galtung's work, conflicts form from contradictions in the structure of society, become manifest in attitudes and behaviour, and then pass through processes such as escalation and polarisation or de-escalation and depolarisation [10]. Galtung's 1969 article used the term structural violence for unequal living conditions, illustrated by the unequal effect of an earthquake on people living in solid houses and in shacks, where the differential impact 'may have been avoidable' [17].

Lederach, as summarised by Miall, sees peacebuilding as the long-term transformation of a war system into a peace system, with changes in personal, structural, relational and cultural aspects of conflict over short, medium and long time frames. His pyramid places elite leaders and decision-makers at the top, leaders of social organisations, religious bodies and the media in the middle and grassroots leaders at the base, and a comprehensive process addresses complementary changes at all three levels [10]. Miall notes as a weakness its limited attention to autonomous processes of change within the political system [10].

Mitchell distinguishes four types of change in protracted conflict (in underlying structure, in situation, in behaviour and in attitudes) and four clusters of obstacles that discourage leaders from changing course (policy, psychological, social and political determinants). He describes entrapment, in which parties persist in a costly course because of sunk costs, loss of face or a belief that there is no alternative [11]. Miall's own typology lists five types of transformation: context, structure, actor, issue and personal or elite [10]. The measurement implication is direct. Each type of change leaves a different observable trace, so a monitoring system built only on violence counts would see only one of them.

Inclusion and sustaining peace

Paffenholz reviews nine models of civil society inclusion in peace negotiations, from most to least direct involvement, and concludes from illustrative case studies that participation can be broadened without decreasing the effectiveness of negotiations [18]. This is an analytic synthesis, not a causal estimate. The United Nations and World Bank study Pathways for Peace reaches a related conclusion at policy level: prevention requires addressing 'grievances around exclusion from access to power, opportunity and security' [19]. General Assembly resolution 70/262 defines sustaining peace as 'a goal and a process to build a common vision of a society, ensuring that the needs of all segments of the population are taken into account', and describes it as a shared task and responsibility of governments and all other national stakeholders, with inclusivity as key [20].

How wars end now

IEP reports, drawing on UCDP data, that the share of state-based conflicts ending in clear victory fell from 49 per cent in the 1970s to roughly nine per cent in the 2010s, and the share ending in a peace agreement from 23 per cent to about four per cent. The dominant outcome is now low-activity termination: 'a conflict slipping into dormancy without a negotiated settlement, leaving the underlying grievances in place and ready to reignite' [1]. For monitoring, a fall in recorded deaths is therefore not evidence of transformation; the frameworks above look for change in structures, relationships and inclusion, which the headline indices do not capture.

3. The regional picture across the 13 countries

Peace, risk and fragility

Table 1 sets the three composite indices side by side. Directions differ. On the GPI a lower score and a lower rank number mean more peaceful; on INFORM Risk a higher score means higher risk of a humanitarian crisis that would need international assistance, and rank 1 is the highest risk of 191 countries; on the FSI a higher score means more fragile and rank 1 is the most fragile of 179 [1, 2, 3].

The three indices agree on the ends of the distribution. All three place Italy as the least affected of the 13, Syria as the most affected and Palestine second most affected. TIPCS calculated Spearman rank correlations across the 13 countries of 0.90 between GPI and INFORM, 0.84 between GPI and FSI, and 0.94 between INFORM and FSI. They diverge in the middle. Türkiye ranks 10th of 13 on the GPI (rank 1 being the most peaceful) but 6th on both INFORM and FSI; Libya ranks 7th on the GPI and 11th on the FSI. Part of the reason is construction. INFORM includes natural hazards, so Türkiye's earthquake component is 9.3 of 10 [2], while the GPI scores militarisation and societal safety as well as conflict [1]. With 13 non-randomly selected countries, the coefficients are descriptive only.

Recorded fatal violence

Table 2 shows concentration. The thirteen countries recorded 18,552 best-estimate deaths in 2025 in the GED file (TIPCS calculation); Gaza and the West Bank account for 14,525 (78 per cent), Syria for 3,449 and Lebanon for 347, and the five Mashreq and Levant countries together for 99.5 per cent. Eight of the thirteen recorded 11 deaths or fewer. These counts are not a measure of insecurity. The GED records incidents in which an organised actor used armed force and at least one person died, each linked to a UCDP state-based, non-state or one-sided violence dataset, and aims at consistent comparison, not at 'the most complete and accurate image' of any one conflict [21]. It holds 186 events for Libya in 2019 and one in 2024 [4], which shows that counts depend on how violence is organised and coded, and not only on how much insecurity exists.

Displacement

Türkiye hosts the most (2,492,911), followed by Egypt (1,098,301) and Kenya (835,771). Syria combines the largest origin population abroad (5,020,119) with 5,542,227 internally displaced people, while 1,341,148 refugees and 1,964,201 internally displaced Syrians returned during 2025 [5]. Stocks reflect registration practices as well as presence: Egypt's total includes 878,268 registered asylum-seekers [5].

Development and governance

Three observations follow. First, the HDI for Palestine fell from 0.733 in 2022 to 0.674 in 2023 and for Libya from 0.741 to 0.721 in the HDR 2025 series [14]. Second, income and peace are only loosely related in this group: Libya's GDP per capita (US$6,449) is higher than Tunisia's (US$4,657) or Jordan's (US$5,348) while its governance scores are the lowest of the three [12, 15]. Third, Freedom House rates one of the thirteen Free (Italy), five Partly Free (Tunisia, Mauritania, Lebanon, Jordan and Kenya) and seven Not Free, counting the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as Palestine. Scores fell in 2026 for Tunisia (44 to 42), Mauritania (39 to 38), Türkiye (33 to 32), Kenya (51 to 49) and Italy (89 to 87), and rose for Lebanon (39 to 41) and Syria (5 to 10) [6].

4. Conflict systems by sub-region

The grouping is analytical, based on geography and conflict dynamics, not on any institutional definition. Libya and Mauritania are placed in the Maghreb; their Sahelian and Sudanese linkages appear under cross-border dynamics.

Maghreb: Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and Mauritania

GPI ranks run from 77th (Tunisia) to 125th (Libya), INFORM Risk from 3.4 (Low) to 5.5 (High) and FSI scores from 67.2 to 96.5 (Table 1) [1, 2, 3]. UCDP recorded no fatal events in 2025 in any of the four [4].

Libya is the main fault line. The Security Council mandated UNSMIL to facilitate an inclusive political process, support ceasefire implementation and advance national reconciliation, with the mandate extended by resolution 2796 (2025) to 31 October 2026. Its roadmap aims at 'guaranteeing general elections and unifying institutions through a sequenced approach', and on 21 October 2026 it condemned the use of force to impose an appointment at the National Audit Bureau [22]. In 2025 the Council renewed for six months the authority to inspect vessels off Libya suspected of violating the arms embargo, by 13 votes to none with two abstentions [23]. Libya hosted 658,477 refugees and asylum-seekers at end-2025, 639,166 of them Sudanese [5].

Tunisia shows why a single index misleads. IEP reports the largest improvement in the region on the 2026 GPI, driven by safety indicators (people not feeling safe walking alone fell from 35 to 23 per cent; reported victimisation by violent crime from 14 to seven per cent), and links it to a consolidation of state authority that 'has come at a cost to civil liberties' [1]. Freedom House scores Tunisia 42 in 2026, down from 44 [6]. Both readings can hold: perceived security rose while civic space narrowed. Mauritania, 112th, has the highest INFORM lack-of-coping-capacity score of the four (6.5 of 10) [1, 2] and hosts 308,868 refugees and asylum-seekers, 303,874 of them from Mali [5].

Mashreq and Levant: Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq

These countries account for almost all fatalities in Table 2. In Gaza and the West Bank, IEP describes a January 2025 ceasefire broken in March 2025 and a second, fragile US-brokered ceasefire in October 2025, with over 2,000 violations documented through March 2026 [1]; UCDP records 14,525 deaths in 2025 against 21,543 in 2024 [4]. Freedom House rates the West Bank 22 and the Gaza Strip 2 of 100 [6]; the HDI for Palestine fell from 0.733 to 0.674 between 2022 and 2023 [14]; UNHCR records 5,964,782 Palestine refugees under the UNRWA mandate [5]. INFORM's lack-of-reliability value is highest for Palestine (7.8), signalling weaker underlying data [2].

In Lebanon, IEP attributes the 2026 improvement to the November 2024 ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, notes that over 64,000 people remained displaced in late 2025, and reports that fighting reignited in early 2026 with over 2,000 fatalities in the first quarter [1]. UCDP deaths fell from 4,339 to 347 [4]; Lebanon hosts 532,357 Syrian refugees [5].

In Syria, IEP states that the December 2024 collapse of the ruling regime opened a path towards political transition [1], and Freedom House reports that Syria had the world's largest score improvement in 2026 (5 to 10, still Not Free) [6, 13]. UCDP events fell from 1,110 to 372 while deaths fell only from 3,621 to 3,449, with one-sided violence against civilians accounting for 1,985 of them (58 per cent, TIPCS calculation) [4].

Jordan is the most stable of the five on every index and hosts 444,294 refugees and asylum-seekers, 420,835 of them Syrian [1, 2, 3, 5]. Iraq ranks 140th, has 997,334 internally displaced people, and recorded 91 UCDP events in 2025 against 287 in 2024 [1, 4, 5].

Nile, Sahel and Horn: Egypt and Kenya

Egypt ranks 113th on the GPI and is rated Not Free by Freedom House (18, unchanged) [1, 6]. Its main regional exposure is displacement from the Sudan war: it hosts 1,098,301 refugees and asylum-seekers, 834,201 of them Sudanese [5]. IEP analyses the Horn of Africa and the Sudan war as one regional conflict system [1]. Kenya ranks 132nd on the GPI, is rated High by INFORM (6.1) with the lowest lack-of-reliability value of the thirteen (1.3), and its Freedom House score fell from 51 to 49 [1, 2, 6]; UCDP records 31 events and 80 deaths [4]. It hosts 835,771 refugees and asylum-seekers, mainly Somali and South Sudanese [5], and belongs to IGAD, whose work includes the CEWARN early warning mechanism [9].

Türkiye and Italy as neighbours

Türkiye rose eight places to 136th on the GPI, its best ranking since 2014. IEP attributes this mainly to the peace process with the PKK (a February 2025 call to disarm, a March ceasefire, a May declaration of dissolution and a July weapons-destruction ceremony), and notes a tightening of domestic political space, including the March 2025 detention of the mayor of Istanbul, which triggered the largest street protests since 2013 [1]. UCDP deaths fell from 43 to 11 [4]; Freedom House rates Türkiye Not Free at 32, one point lower [6]. Türkiye hosts 2,492,911 refugees and asylum-seekers, 2,347,756 of them Syrian [5].

Italy ranks 35th on the GPI, is rated Low by INFORM (3.1) and Free by Freedom House (87, down from 89) [1, 2, 6]. Its relevance to the conflict systems above is as a destination: it hosts 427,058 refugees and asylum-seekers [5] and was the main arrival country on the Central Mediterranean route, with 65,327 arrivals to Italy and Malta in 2025, 4 per cent more than in 2024 [24].

5. Cross-border dynamics

IEP's 2026 analysis distinguishes material channels of conflict spread (refugee and displacement flows, arms and combatant circulation, illicit economies, rebel sanctuaries) from relational channels (transborder ethnic kin, external state sponsorship, transnational ideological networks), conditioned by demonstration effects and weak state capacity [1]. IEP's reading is that refugee inflows raise the probability of conflict onset in host states, but 'the reason is not that refugees are themselves violent, but that mass displacement opens channels through which arms, fighters and political mobilisation move across borders' [1]. For do-no-harm, this locates the risk in border control, arms flows and camp governance, not in displaced people.

IEP's examples include this region. After the collapse of the Libyan state in 2011, stockpiles of the former government dispersed across the Sahara and reached armed groups in Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Chad and as far as the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza; Tuareg fighters returning to northern Mali launched a rebellion in January 2012, and the insurgency then expanded into central Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. IEP describes the Sudan war as fully internationalised, with at least seven of its nine spread mechanisms operating at once and a broad set of foreign patrons [1].

Displacement ties the thirteen countries together. Five of them (Türkiye, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt) host 3,726,538 Syrian refugees, 74 per cent of the 5,020,119 Syrian refugees and asylum-seekers abroad (TIPCS calculation). Egypt and Libya host 1,473,367 Sudanese refugees and asylum-seekers between them, and Chad 1,334,595. Mauritania hosts 303,874 people from Mali, and Kenya 661,994 from Somalia and South Sudan [5].

On the sea route, UNHCR and IOM recorded 100,777 attempted crossings from Libya, Tunisia and Algeria towards Italy and Malta in 2025, 21 per cent fewer than in 2024; disembarkations fell by 68 per cent in Tunisia and rose by 8 per cent in Libya, which re-emerged as the principal country of departure; 1,330 people were recorded dead or missing. The Overview describes a reconfiguration within the route, not a uniform decline [24]. IEP adds that Gulf supply disruptions linked to the Iran war are expected to reach East African harvests in late 2026 and early 2027, an assessment of effects still unfolding [1].

6. Where cooperation exists

No single framework covers all thirteen countries. The UfM list names ten and gives Libya observer status, the AU covers six, IGAD one, and Arab League membership among the thirteen was not verified [7, 8, 9]. The EU's Pact for the Mediterranean states its goal as 'co-creating a space of peace, prosperity and stability through a genuine partnership' and lists civil society, youth groups, academia and think tanks among contributors, but the page refers to no particular conflict [26]. The UfM's five priority areas do not include peace and security as a separate area [25]. For the Arab League, the sources reviewed describe its treaty basis and note that it became increasingly political in the 1970s, especially amid internal disputes [28], but not its recent practice, so no assessment of its effectiveness is offered.

Two points of interpretation follow. First, the frameworks are organised by membership, geography and policy area, while the conflict systems above run along borders, displacement and external sponsorship, so the two maps overlap only in part. Second, IEP observes that influence is now divided among a more competitive set of state sponsors and that no single coalition can impose terms or keep the peace [1]. Entry points for non-governmental actors lie in frameworks that invite them [20, 26]; these are openings, not evidence of impact.

7. Reading the indicators: what composite indices can and cannot say

Composite indices are useful for orientation and risky for decisions. The OECD and the European Commission's Joint Research Centre published a handbook of technical guidelines for constructing composite indicators because construction choices shape results [30]. Six limits apply to the tables above.

1. Different constructs. The GPI measures negative peace through 23 indicators in three domains [1]. INFORM Risk identifies countries at high risk of humanitarian crisis that are more likely to require international assistance [2]. Freedom House scores political rights and civil liberties [13]. They are not interchangeable measures of 'peace'.
2. Mixed vintages. The GPI cut-off is mostly December 2025 [1]; the FSI edition is 2024 [3]; the HDI refers to 2023 [14]; GDP per capita is for 2022 (Syria) and 2024 (Lebanon) [15]. Table 4 therefore mixes years.
3. Statistical uncertainty. The World Bank describes WGI scores as estimates based on perception data, not definitive ratings [31]. The 90 per cent intervals for Political Stability are 46.5 to 60.3 for Tunisia, 47.1 to 60.9 for Algeria, 47.1 to 61.2 for Mauritania and 53.5 to 66.7 for Jordan, so their central scores (53.4, 54.0, 54.1 and 60.1) cannot be reliably ranked against each other [12].
4. Weighting and adjacent ranks. IEP reports that about 70 per cent of pairwise country comparisons in the GPI are independent of the weighting scheme, a level it calls similar to the HDI [1]. Mauritania (112th, 2.184) and Egypt (113th, 2.186) differ by 0.002 points [1]; no conclusion should rest on that gap.
5. Qualitative scoring and coding rules. Three GPI indicators are scored by analysts who also fill data gaps with estimates [1], and UCDP GED aims at comparability, not the most complete image of any one conflict [21]. A zero is not peace.
6. Aggregation hides divergence. Tunisia improved on the GPI and fell on Freedom House; Türkiye improved on the GPI while IEP notes a tightening of political space [1, 6]. A single composite would average away the contrasts that conflict transformation analysis needs to see.

Names are also contested: sources label the same territory 'Palestine', 'West Bank' and 'Gaza Strip' separately, or 'Palestine, State of', and UCDP codes it under another country field [1, 4, 6, 14]. This report follows United Nations usage.

8. Implications for policy and practice

The implications below are options for named kinds of actors, not positions on contested political questions.

• Donors and foundations: read at least three indices side by side, with edition and reference year, and treat divergence (as for Türkiye and Libya in Table 1) as a prompt for analysis [1, 2, 3]. Avoid allocating resources on a single rank, since 30 per cent of GPI pairwise comparisons depend on weighting [1]. Fund independent local data on structures, relationships and inclusion, which the headline indices do not capture [10, 11].
• Governments and regional organisations: publish event, displacement and early-warning data in open, machine-readable form, and use existing mechanisms such as the African Union's Continental Early Warning System and IGAD's CEWARN to share information across borders [9, 27]. Report against the sustaining peace framework, which treats peace as a shared task of governments and all national stakeholders [20].
• United Nations agencies and index producers: print edition, reference year and uncertainty in headline tables, as the WGI does with its 90 per cent intervals [12], and publish reliability measures, as INFORM does [2].
• Municipalities and host communities: displacement is concentrated in a few hosts [5], and IEP locates the conflict-spread risk in border control, arms flows and camp governance, not in displaced people [1]. Local authorities need service-use and perception data to see tensions early, which national indices cannot supply.
• Civil society organisations: use the entry points that invite them, including the sustaining peace resolution and the Pact for the Mediterranean's consultation of civil society and think tanks [20, 26], and document inclusion in formal processes using Paffenholz's nine models as a coding frame [18].
• Researchers: test whether indicators of transformation and inclusion add explanatory power beyond violence counts and composite scores; report intervals, editions and revisions; publish code and coding rules.

9. What TIPCS proposes

TIPCS is an independent, nonpartisan research, dialogue and training institute headquartered in Monastir, with offices in the thirteen countries covered by this report and working in English, French and Arabic. It has seven policies in force (code of conduct, safeguarding and PSEA, anti-fraud and anti-corruption, conflict of interest, whistleblowing and complaints, sanctions and due diligence, and research ethics and editorial independence) and publishes its funding. TIPCS proposes to build and publish an annual regional monitoring framework for the thirteen countries, designed around the limits identified in the previous section.

Design principles

• Published indices would form a context layer, reported with edition, reference year and uncertainty. TIPCS would not publish its own single composite score and would not rank governments.
• The framework would add a transformation layer based on Miall's five types of transformation and Mitchell's four types of change, a layer for Lederach's three levels of society, and an inclusion layer based on Paffenholz's nine models and the sustaining peace resolution [10, 11, 18, 20].
• A divergence flag would mark any country whose rank differs by four or more places between any two of GPI, INFORM and FSI, as Türkiye and Libya do in Table 1. The threshold is a starting assumption to be tested.
• Every indicator would carry a data-quality flag, and zero counts would be reported as 'none recorded in this source'.
• Publication would be in English, French and Arabic, with codebook, sources and revisions, including findings that do not support TIPCS's own assumptions.

How the framework itself would be tested

1. Convergent validity: report how the context layer correlates with the transformation and local layers, and where it does not.
2. Coder reliability: two independent coders for layers 5 and 6, agreement statistics published, coding rules revised if agreement is low.
3. External review: an advisory group from outside TIPCS would review the codebook and the first release.
4. Usefulness: structured feedback from donors, municipalities and civil society partners on whether the framework changed a decision, with negative findings published.

Ethics, safeguarding and do-no-harm

• The seven policies in force, including safeguarding and PSEA and research ethics and editorial independence, would apply to all staff, partners and consultants, with complaints and whistleblowing channels in English, French and Arabic.
• No personal data would be published; violence and displacement data would be used only in the aggregated form published by the sources. Layer 7 would run only after local ethical review, with consent in the participant's language, the right to withdraw and secure storage.
• A conflict-sensitivity review would precede each release, because rankings and flags can be used to stigmatise communities or governments.
• TIPCS would publish its funding and conflicts of interest, and the framework would not be designed to favour any government, party or armed group.

Partnership model and sequencing

TIPCS would seek partnerships with universities, data producers, regional organisations and civil society organisations, with roles agreed in writing and shared data governance. Work would be sequenced: a first release of layers 1 to 4 and 8 using the 2026 editions; a pilot of layers 5 and 6 in a few countries chosen with the country offices; and a pilot of layer 7 only where the ethical and do-no-harm review is passed. Results would be measured against the test criteria above by an external evaluator and published, including any finding that the framework adds nothing to existing indices.

10. Risks, limitations and what we do not know

• Source vintage. The FSI used is the 2024 edition, published in February 2025; a later edition may exist that was not located. The HDI refers to 2023 and Syria's GDP per capita to 2022 [3, 14, 15].
• Event data. UCDP counts fatal events linked to its datasets and does not measure repression or unrest without deaths. ACLED data were not accessed [16, 21].
• Missing data. UNHCR does not report internally displaced people for several of the thirteen, and Palestine refugees under UNRWA are separate [5]. No comparable verified figure was found for displacement within Palestine.
• Cooperation. Arab League membership among the thirteen and the recent performance of regional frameworks were not verified; no evaluation of their effectiveness was found in the sources reviewed.
• Proposal risks. The framework could be read as ranking governments, coding of transformation is judgemental, and local surveys carry risks of exposure and self-censorship. The safeguards reduce, and do not remove, these risks.

11. Conclusion

The published indicators give a consistent but incomplete picture of the thirteen countries. They agree that Italy is at one end and Syria and Palestine at the other, that fatal violence in 2025 was concentrated in the Mashreq and Levant, and that displacement links Syria, Sudan, the Sahel and the Horn to hosts in several of the thirteen countries [1, 4, 5]. They disagree in the middle, carry uncertainty that is rarely printed, and say little about whether conflict systems are being transformed, which the theory of Galtung, Lederach, Mitchell and Paffenholz locates in changed structures, relationships and inclusion [10, 11, 18]. Cooperation frameworks exist but cover the thirteen countries unevenly. The proposal here is meant to complement published indices, not replace them, and to test whether transformation and inclusion indicators add anything the existing indices miss.

Method and limits of this brief

This report is a desk review of public sources accessed on 26 October 2026; it draws on no primary fieldwork, interviews or non-public data. Several figures are calculated by TIPCS from public datasets (UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset, UNHCR Refugee Data Finder, World Bank indicators, INFORM and UNDP data files) and revised editions may differ. Indices are quoted with their own editions and reference years, which range from 2023 to 2026, so the tables are not a single-date cross-section. The Fragile States Index edition used (2024) is the latest located, not necessarily the latest produced. ACLED event data were not accessed. Some sources (Freedom House country pages, UNSMIL pages) were read as web pages and may be updated. Rank correlations for 13 non-randomly selected countries are descriptive only. Attribution of changes in indicators to specific events is not possible with the evidence reviewed. Statements about TIPCS are limited to its institutional profile and to the proposal, which describes intended work and not results.

References

1. [1]Institute for Economics and Peace (2026). Global Peace Index 2026: Measuring peace in a complex world. IEP, Sydney (June 2026). https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Global-Peace-Index-2026-Report.pdf (accessed 2026-10-26)
2. [2]INFORM (2026). INFORM Risk Index, mid-2026 release (version 0.7.3, 1 September 2026; data file). European Commission Joint Research Centre and Inter-Agency Standing Committee Reference Group on Risk, Early Warning and Preparedness. https://drmkc.jrc.ec.europa.eu/inform-index/Portals/0/InfoRM/2026/INFORM_Risk_Mid_2026_v073.xlsx (accessed 2026-10-26)
3. [3]Fund for Peace (2025). Fragile States Index 2024: Annual Report, A World Adrift (published 18 February 2025). Fund for Peace. https://fragilestatesindex.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/FSI-2024-Report-A-World-Adrift-2.pdf (accessed 2026-10-26)
4. [4]Uppsala Conflict Data Program (2026). UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset (GED), version 26.1, events 1 January 1989 to 31 December 2025; annual event and best-estimate death counts for 2024 and 2025 calculated by TIPCS from the event file. Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University. https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/ged/ged261-csv.zip (accessed 2026-10-26)
5. [5]UNHCR (2026). Refugee Data Finder: population statistics for 2025 by country of origin and country of asylum, including the series for Palestine refugees under the UNRWA mandate (API query; sums calculated by TIPCS). United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. https://api.unhcr.org/population/v1/population/?limit=1000&year=2025&coa_all=true&coo_all=true&cf_type=ISO (accessed 2026-10-26)
6. [6]Freedom House (2026). Freedom in the World 2026: country reports and scores for Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Mauritania, West Bank, Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey (Türkiye), Jordan, Iraq, Kenya and Italy (country pages at the same address pattern, read individually). Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/country/tunisia/freedom-world/2026 (accessed 2026-10-26)
7. [7]Union for the Mediterranean (2026). Member states. UfM Secretariat, Barcelona. https://ufmsecretariat.org/who-we-are/member-states/ (accessed 2026-10-26)
8. [8]African Union (2026). Member States country profiles. African Union. https://au.int/en/member_states/countryprofiles2 (accessed 2026-10-26)
9. [9]Intergovernmental Authority on Development (2026). IGAD website: member states and peace and security programme (CEWARN). https://igad.int/ (accessed 2026-10-26)
10. [10]Miall, H. (2004). Conflict Transformation: A Multi-Dimensional Task. Berghof Handbook for Conflict Transformation. Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management. https://berghof-foundation.org/files/publications/miall_handbook.pdf (accessed 2026-10-26)
11. [11]Mitchell, C. R. (2005). Conflict, Social Change and Conflict Resolution: An Enquiry. Berghof Handbook for Conflict Transformation. Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management. https://berghof-foundation.org/files/publications/mitchell_handbook.pdf (accessed 2026-10-26)
12. [12]World Bank (2026). Worldwide Governance Indicators, 2026 update: governance scores (0 to 100) and bounds of the 90% interval for 2025, indicators GOV_WGI_PV.SC, RL.SC and GE.SC (API query, source 3, updated 25 September 2026). https://api.worldbank.org/v2/country/TUN;DZA;LBY;EGY;MRT;PSE;LBN;SYR;TUR;JOR;IRQ;KEN;ITA/indicator/GOV_WGI_PV.SC?format=json&source=3&mrv=1&per_page=100 (accessed 2026-10-26)
13. [13]Freedom House (2026). Freedom in the World 2026: The Growing Shadow of Autocracy. Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2026/growing-shadow-autocracy (accessed 2026-10-26)
14. [14]UNDP (2025). Human Development Report 2025: composite indices complete time series (Human Development Index for 2023; data file HDR25_Composite_indices_complete_time_series.csv). United Nations Development Programme. https://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/2025_HDR/HDR25_Composite_indices_complete_time_series.csv (accessed 2026-10-26)
15. [15]World Bank (2026). GDP per capita (current US$), indicator NY.GDP.PCAP.CD, World Development Indicators, updated 8 October 2026 (API query). https://api.worldbank.org/v2/country/TUN;DZA;LBY;EGY;MRT;PSE;LBN;SYR;TUR;JOR;IRQ;KEN;ITA/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?format=json&mrv=6&per_page=500 (accessed 2026-10-26)
16. [16]ACLED (2026). Data export tool (access page requiring registration). Armed Conflict Location and Event Data. https://acleddata.com/conflict-data/data-export-tool (accessed 2026-10-26)
17. [17]Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, Peace, and Peace Research. Journal of Peace Research 6(3), pp. 167-191. https://doi.org/10.1177/002234336900600301 (accessed 2026-10-26)
18. [18]Paffenholz, T. (2014). Civil Society and Peace Negotiations: Beyond the Inclusion-Exclusion Dichotomy. Negotiation Journal 30(1), pp. 69-91. https://doi.org/10.1111/nejo.12046 (accessed 2026-10-26)
19. [19]United Nations and World Bank (2018). Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict. World Bank, Washington DC. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/28337 (accessed 2026-10-26)
20. [20]United Nations General Assembly (2016). Resolution 70/262: Review of the United Nations peacebuilding architecture (adopted 27 April 2016), A/RES/70/262. https://docs.un.org/en/A/RES/70/262 (accessed 2026-10-26)
21. [21]Uppsala Conflict Data Program (2026). UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset Codebook, version 26.1. Uppsala University. https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/ged/ged261.pdf (accessed 2026-10-26)
22. [22]United Nations Support Mission in Libya (2026). UNSMIL website: mandate, roadmap and latest statements (accessed 26 October 2026). https://unsmil.unmissions.org/ (accessed 2026-10-26)
23. [23]United Nations Security Council (2025). Press release on the adoption of resolution 2804 (2025), Libya arms embargo inspection authorisation. United Nations. https://press.un.org/en/2025/sc16233.doc.htm (accessed 2026-10-26)
24. [24]UNHCR and IOM (2026). Migrant and Refugee Movements through the Central Mediterranean Sea in 2025: Joint Annual Overview. https://data.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/124566 (accessed 2026-10-26)
25. [25]Union for the Mediterranean (2026). Who we are. UfM Secretariat, Barcelona. https://ufmsecretariat.org/who-we-are/ (accessed 2026-10-26)
26. [26]European Commission, DG for Middle East, North Africa and Gulf (2026). Pact for the Mediterranean (policy page). https://north-africa-middle-east-gulf.ec.europa.eu/what-we-do/pact-mediterranean_en (accessed 2026-10-26)
27. [27]African Union (2026). Peace and Security Council. African Union. https://au.int/en/psc (accessed 2026-10-26)
28. [28]Encyclopaedia Britannica (2026). Arab League. Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Arab-League (accessed 2026-10-26)
29. [29]Avalon Project, Yale Law School (1945). Pact of the League of Arab States, 22 March 1945. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/arableag.asp (accessed 2026-10-26)
30. [30]OECD and European Commission Joint Research Centre (2008). Handbook on Constructing Composite Indicators: Methodology and User Guide. OECD Publishing, Paris. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/handbook-on-constructing-composite-indicators-methodology-and-user-guide_9789264043466-en.html (accessed 2026-10-26)
31. [31]World Bank (2026). Worldwide Governance Indicators (project page, 2026 update). World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/worldwide-governance-indicators (accessed 2026-10-26)

How to cite

Tunisian Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (TIPCS) (2026). Peace and Conflict in TIPCS's 13 Countries: a regional outlook and indicator framework. Monastir: TIPCS. www.tipcs.org/publications/regional-outlook-framework