One in every three women exposed to conflict globally lives in Sub-Saharan Africa

More than 240 million women in Sub-Saharan Africa were living within 50 kilometres of deadly conflict in 2025, accounting for about a third of all women exposed to violence globally and marking a five-fold increase since 2010, a new study has found.

The findings are contained in a new policy brief by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), which examines women's exposure to armed conflict between 1990 and 2025. The study defines women as being exposed to conflict when they live within 50km of at least one fatal conflict event.

Globally, about 756 million women, nearly one in five women worldwide, lived within that distance of a deadly conflict event in 2025. This is the highest number and proportion recorded since the 1990s. PRIO research director Siri Aas Rustad notes that conflict today is reaching more women than at any point since the end of the Cold War.

“These figures are more than a measure of violence; they reflect millions of lives shaped by insecurity, disrupted healthcare, lost education and fewer opportunities,” said Ms Rustad, the author of the report.

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The analysis identifies Sub-Saharan Africa as the epicentre of the crisis, with more than 40 per cent of women in the region living in conflict during the preceding year, compared to about 15 per cent in the rest of the world.

The figures reinforce the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre’s 2026 Global Report on Internal Displacement, which found that Sub-Saharan Africa recorded 17.3 million internal displacements in 2025, primarily driven by persistent conflict and violence.

Conflict uprooted millions across the region, with the Democratic Republic of the Congo recording 9.7 million internal displacements, followed by Sudan with 1.7 million and South Sudan with 864,000.