UCDP One-sided Violence Codebook
Version 17.2
Uppsala Conflict Data Program
Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University

This version compiled and updated by Marie Allansson and Mihai Croicu (2017)
Replacing the earlier versions by Therése Pettersson (2012), Joakim Kreutz (2008)
and Joakim Kreutz & Kristine Eck (2005)

Citation for the dataset:
Eck, Kristine and Lisa Hultman, 2007. ‘One-sided violence against civilians in war: insightsfrom new fatality data´, Journal of Peace Research 44(2): 233-246.
(When appropriate) also cite this codebook. Always include the Version number in analyses
using the dataset.

Introduction
This document describes the One-sided Violence Dataset, a project within the Uppsala Conflict
Data Program (UCDP) at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University.
The UCDP One-sided violence project has been developed with support from the Human
Security Report Project, Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, Canada.
Case-specific information about the cases of one-sided violence is available at www.ucdp.uu.se
Questions regarding the definitions and the content of the dataset can be directed toTherese.Pettersson@pcr.uu.se1/6

Definition of One-sided violenceOne-sided violence is the use of armed force by the government of a state or by a formallyorganized group against civilians which results in at least 25 deaths. Extrajudicial killings incustody are excluded.
The separate elements of the definition are operationalized as follows:(1) Use of armed force: use of arms in order to exert violent force, resulting in death(1.1) Arms: any material means, e.g. manufactured weapons but also sticks, stones,
fire, water, etc(2) 25 deaths: a minimum of 25 civilian deaths per year and per actor(3) Government: the party controlling the capital of the state(4) Formally organized group: any non-governmental group of people having announced
a name for their group and using armed force(5) State: a state is(5.1) an internationally recognized sovereign government controlling a specified territory,or(5.2) an internationally unrecognized government controlling a specified territory whosesovereignty is not disputed by another internationally recognized sovereign government
previously controlling the same territory.
(6) Extrajudicial killings in custody: when the government of a state kills a person in its custody(5.1) custody: when the person is located in a prison or another type of governmental
facility

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Variables in the One-sided violence dataset

Variable nameContentTypeActorID

This is a numerical identifier that describes each Integer
individual actor. The dataset makes use of the general
actor/side ID employed by UCDP.
Warning: Unlike the previous versions of the dataset,
this variable is NO LONGER the Gleditsch and Wardidentifier (GWNo) for the state actors. Use GWNoA
below instead!

GWNoACoalitionComponents

ActorName

YearIn version 17.2 of the dataset, the ID system for conflicts,
actors and dyads has been changed in order to make it
unique across all UCDP core datasets and all UCDP
types of violence. To download a conversion tablecontaining
newandoldIDs,visit
http://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/.
The Gleditsch and Ward country identifier if the actor Integer
perpetrating one-sided violence is a state.
Empty otherwise.
If multiple actors are perpetrating violence together as a string
joint (temporary) coalition, the components of thecoalition (in the form of a string of actor IDs) is listed
here.
For one-sided violence with multiple actors fighting string
together, the actors’ separate Actor IDs, taken from theUCDP Actor Dataset, are listed in this variable andseparated by a comma (‘,’).
The calendar year of observation. UCDP employs a Integer
threshold for inclusion of at least 25 deaths caused by
one-sided violence for each actor in a calendar year.
There are cases when actors are responsible for onesided violence of a scale that does not meet thethreshold.
These observations are coded as absence of one-sidedviolence.
Episodes that do not exceed the threshold for actors thathave exceeded the threshold at least once during the1989-2016 period can be traced through the UCDP GED
dataset.

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BestFatalityEstimate

The best fatality estimate for the given episode.

LowFatalityEstimate

This is an automatic aggregation (summing) of all theBest figures for all incidents reported for the given dyadyear in the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset.
The low fatality estimate for the given episode.
IntegerHighFatalityEstimate

This is an automatic aggregation (summing) of all theLow figures for all incidents reported for the given dyadyear in the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset.
The high fatality estimate for the given episode.
Integer

Location

IntegerThis is an automatic aggregation (summing) of all theHigh figures for all incidents reported for the given dyadyear in the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset.
The countries where this episode of violence took place. string
Comma-separated if multiple.
WARNING: This variable SHOULD NEVER be used forany geographical or spatial analyses of conflict as thedistribution of violence as well as the relative magnitudeof violence by country is not captured. In effect a country
is listed here if even one dead in the given conflict has
occurred in that country.
In fact, UCDP provides much better geographic
coverage of conflict (including distribution of violence foreach conflict and each country) in the UCDP
Georeferenced Event Dataset (GED).

GWNo

Like the UCDP One-Sided Violence Dataset, GED is
global and covers the same period (1989-2016).
The Gleditsch and Ward code for the countries where string
this episode of one-sided violence took place. Commaseparated if multiple.
WARNING: This variable SHOULD NEVER be used forany geographical or spatial analyses of conflict as thedistribution of violence as well as the relative magnitudeof violence by country is not captured. In effect a country
is listed here if even one dead in the given conflict has
occurred in that country.
In fact, UCDP provides much better geographic
coverage of one-sided violence (including distribution ofviolence for each dyad and each country) in the UCDPGeoreferenced Event Dataset (GED).
Like the UCDP One-Sided Violence Dataset, GED is
global and covers the same period (1989-2016).

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RegionThe continents (regions) where violence took place:stringVersion

1 = Europe (GWNo: 200-399),
2 = Middle East (GWNo: 630-650 and 652-699)
3 = Asia (GWNo: 700-999)
4 = Africa (GWNo: 400-626 and 651)
5 = Americas (GWNo: 2-199).
The version of the dataset: 17.2

float

Data Collection Methods:
This dataset is the result of an automatic filtering and aggregation of the UCDP Georeferenced
Event Dataset from incident/event level to the actor-year level.
The original reporting underlying the dataset is collected from three sets of sources:
1. global newswire reporting
2. global monitoring and translation of local news performed by the BBC
3. secondary sources such as local media, NGO and IGO reports, field reports, books etc.
The process is done in a "two-pass" system, first by consulting newswire sources for the entire
globe then by consulting local/specialized sources based on information obtained from the firstpass.
A detailed description of the process including a detailed description of the passes and thesearch-strings employed is provided in the UCDP GED Codebook version 17.2, Section 4.

Version name convention
In 2017, the version name convention was changed, giving all UCDP datasets the same version
number across the board. This was done so that users more easily can see which UCDP dataset
corresponds with which.
This codebook corresponds to Version 17.2 of the UCDP One-sided Violence Dataset. For every
new release, substantial changes will be documented in a separate document. This should be5/6

helpful to researchers trying to replicate a particular study. We recommend that whenever thisdataset is used, the version number should be cited.
The version number is a combination of a year and a number. The year refers to when the dataset
is updated with new observations. If there are changes in the data between yearly updates, or if
there are substantial changes in the structure of the dataset, the number behind the year isincremented.

Format availability:
The data is available in CSV (respecting the RFC 4180 specification), Excel (XLSX), Rdata (3.xversion) and STATA (2010 format).
The data will soon be available for machine-to-machine interaction through a public API as anopen beta during stage 2 of the UCDP API extension. Documentation for how to use the API isavailable at http://ucdp.uu.se/apidocs.

A note on UCDP ID changes
In version 17.1 of all UCDP datasets, the ID system for conflicts, actors and dyads has beenchanged in order to make them unique across all UCDP core datasets and all UCDP types ofviolence. This will allow easier aggregation and disaggregation of data as well as simplify data
management for users, especially when combining multiple UCDP products together.
For example, a non-state conflict ID will no longer be able to have the same ID as a (different)
state-based conflict ID or as a case of one-sided violence (which was possible before).
Further, actor/side IDs representing a government have been decoupled from their corresponding
Gleditsch and Ward country codes (GWNo). This will allow, in the future, the identification ofregime changes within a country etc. Gleditsch and Ward country codes for state sides/actors
will continue to be provided in separate columns from their sides ID (i.e. side_a_id is different
from gwno_a but represents the same entity).
This means all IDs used in this version of the dataset are no longer compatible with those inolder versions of UCDP products. Further, this means that external products relying on UCDP
IDs for data management tasks will have to be adapted to work with the new ID systems.
A conversion table between the new and old ID systems is available here:
http://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/.

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