How many people in the world are living in a country at war - with
another country or with factions within itself, civil war etc. -
access to a source of all such countries would be great please

dtn142-ga,

An interesting question!

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute is generally
regarded as the most authoritative source of information on armed
conflict in the world.

Their latest annual report is summarized at:



http://editors.sipri.se/pubs/yb04/SIPRIYearbook2004mini.pdf


and in it, SIPRI reports that there are 19 major armed conflicts around the globe:


==========

The locations of the 19 major armed conflicts in 2003

Africa
Algeria
Burundi
Liberia*
Sudan

America
Colombia
Peru
USA

Europe
Russia

Asia
India* (Kashmir)
India?Pakistan*
Indonesia*
Myanmar (Burma)
Nepal*
Philippines (2 conflicts)
Sri Lanka

Middle East
Iraq*
Israel
Turkey

* These 6 conflicts each caused 1000 or more deaths in 2003.

============


In terms of your original question -- the number of people in the
world  in countries involved in such conflicts -- the numbers are very
large, since some of the world's most populous nations are included in
the SIPRI list.


According to population statistics compiled by the United Nations and
reported here:



http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/vitstats/serATab2.pdf



the populations of the countries involved in armed conflicts are as follows:



USA ....................... 281,421,906
Indonesia ................. 206,264,595
Russia .................... 145,537,200
Pakistan .................. 130,579,571
Philippines .................76,504,077
Turkey ..................... 67,844,903
Myanmar .................... 35,307,913
Columbia ................... 33,109,840
Algeria .................... 29,100,867
Sudan ...................... 24,940,683
Nepal ...................... 23,151,423
Peru ....................... 22,048,356
Iraq ....................... 19,184,543
Sri Lanka .................. 16,864,544
Israel ...................... 5,548,523
Burundi...................... 5,139,073
Liberia...................... 2,101,628

Total ....................2,151,664,892



So, according to the SIPRI and population data, about 2.15 billion
people -- a third of the world's population -- live in countries
currently beset by armed conflict.

Of course, the experiences of the individuals in these countries vary
greatly.  Although I live in the USA -- a country that is listed as
"at war" with al-Qaeda, and in Iraq -- my day to day experience of the
conflicts generally comes only through news sources.  Many of the
people in places like Sudan are far less fortunate in this respect.


I hope this information fully meets your needs.  But before rating
this answer, please let me know if you need any additional
information.   Just post a Request for Clarification, and I'll be
happy to assist you further.

Peace,

pafalafa-ga



search strategy:  Google searches for:

Stockholm peace institute
population statistics

Hello dtnl42-ga,

I located the following information that might be of your interst.

Global Conflict Trends
There are a number of interesting graphs on this page
http://members.aol.com/CSPmgm/conflict.htm

Countries at War
http://www.peace2k.org/atwar.html

War Facts
http://www.ppu.org.uk/war/index_facts.html

Major wars and armed conflicts - since 1945
Click on map to access further information
http://www.ppu.org.uk/war/index.html

Political Conflict
http://www.ppu.org.uk/war/interactive/conflict_interactive.html

Countries in conflict 
Click on map to access further information
http://www.medecinsdumonde.co.uk/kids/countriesinconflict.html

Armed Conflict 1946?2000: A New Dataset
Figure 2 gives the incidence of conflict measured as the number of
countries in conflict per year.
Figure 6. Armed Conflicts by Location, 1989?99
http://www.pcr.uu.se/conferenses/Euroconference/nilspetterpapper.pdf

Do the above resources answer your question or would you need actual numbers?

Thanks,
Bobbie7

Try http://www.crisisweb.org/home/index.cfm. Sign up for their
bulletin for regular updates on the changing situation in the world  -
I got mine this morning.

You may be interested in this, too - http://www.bradford.ac.uk/acad/confres/

To qualify pafalafa's answer,

Yes, the experiences of individuals vary greatly.
btw the figure there does not add up cos it missed india in the population list.
Anyway, just take India's case, the number would not add upto 1
billion. the total population affected by  War or terrorist action or
such strife would not be more than 100 million max.
So I suppose you should take it with a pinch of salt. 
Not every Indian, American or Russian is out there fighting terrorists.