Since March 2025

South Sudan Death Toll

Deaths from organised violence since March 2025, recorded event by event by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP): civilians, the parties to the war and other armed groups. Every figure has a source, a type of source and a reference date.

South Sudan

Updated monthly

1,187

deaths from organised violence, best estimate (range 1,149 to 1,437)

Type of source: Monitor UCDP, up to 31 Aug 2026

Other counts

Counts by the UN, governments and independent monitors, each with its own period and definition. They are shown next to the UCDP figure and never added to it.

Civilians killed in conflict-related violence, documented by the UN 2,299

Type of source: Verified by UN UNMISS Human Rights Division, in a report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1 Jan 2025 to 31 Dec 2025

Includes violence by community-based militias and civil defence groups, not only fighting between the government and the SPLM/A in Opposition.
Civilians killed in conflict-related violence, documented by the UN 767

Type of source: Verified by UN UNMISS Human Rights Division, quarterly brief, 1 Jan 2026 to 31 Mar 2026

Community-based militias and civil defence groups accounted for 941 of the 1,388 civilian victims (killed, injured, abducted or subjected to sexual violence) in this quarter.
Children killed, verified by the UN 114

Type of source: Verified by UN UN Secretary-General, report on children and armed conflict, 1 Jan 2025 to 31 Dec 2025

Another 83 children were maimed. Of the 197 children killed or maimed, the UN attributed 126 to the South Sudan People's Defence Forces.

Latest update

109

deaths in August 2026, the latest month in the data

Breakdown

Civilians: 336; 28%
Government forces of South Sudan: 64; 5%
SPLM/A in Opposition: 134; 11%
Other armed groups: 54; 5%
Not assigned: 599; 50%

UCDP assigns each death to the civilians or to a party where the sources allow it, and otherwise to not assigned. Deaths of a party are deaths among its own forces.

Increase

Past 12 months: +799; September 2025 to August 2026
In 2026 so far: +613; January to August 2026

Scope

All of South Sudan. Counted: fighting between a government and armed groups, fighting between armed groups, and deliberate killings of civilians by an organised group, in events with at least one death.

Sources

UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset (GED) 26.1 (final data up to the end of 2025)
UCDP Candidate Events Dataset 26.01.26.06, 26.0.7, 26.0.8 (monthly data for 2026)
UCDP Conflict Encyclopedia, South Sudan (background)
Technical assistance and capacity-building for South Sudan, report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (A/HRC/62/57, advance edited version, copy on ecoi.net), 10 Jun 2026 (civilians killed, Jan 2025 to Dec 2025)
UNMISS Human Rights Division, Brief on Violence Affecting Civilians, January-March 2026, 30 Jun 2026 (civilians killed, Jan 2026 to Mar 2026)
Children and armed conflict, report of the Secretary-General (A/80/723, S/2026/357), 16 Jun 2026 (children killed, Jan 2025 to Dec 2025)

Deaths per month

Best estimate per month, all groups together. The months of 2026 come from the monthly candidate data and can still change.

Deaths per month

The chart needs JavaScript. The same figures are in the table below.

Show as monthly table

Deaths per month
Month	Deaths	Total since the start
August 2026	109	1,187
July 2026	49	1,078
June 2026	32	1,029
May 2026	43	997
April 2026	23	954
March 2026	128	931
February 2026	47	803
January 2026	182	756
December 2025	28	574
November 2025	10	546
October 2025	56	536
September 2025	92	480
August 2025	11	388
July 2025	3	377
June 2025	4	374
May 2025	106	370
April 2025	29	264
March 2025	235	235

What is not counted

The civil war from 2013 to 2018.
Deaths from hunger, disease or lack of care caused by the war.
Deaths in events that no source has reported, or that the sources do not describe precisely enough.
Deaths after 31 Aug 2026: the data run to that date.

Notes on method

Period

The page starts in March 2025, when fighting between the government and armed opposition groups resumed in Upper Nile, after years of a fragile peace agreement signed in 2018.

Data

UCDP records fewer deaths in South Sudan than some other monitors. Much of the violence in the country takes place between communities and is only included where UCDP records it as organised violence.

Source

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) at Uppsala University records organised violence event by event, from news media, reports of humanitarian and human rights organisations and other sources. For every event it gives a best estimate of the number of deaths, with a low and a high estimate. This page adds up the best estimates.

The final data run to the end of 2025 (GED 26.1). The months of 2026 come from the monthly candidate data (26.01.26.06, 26.0.7, 26.0.8), which UCDP revises when it publishes the final version.

Groups

For each event UCDP records the deaths among each of the two parties, the civilians killed and the deaths it cannot assign. On this page the parties named in the breakdown are shown separately; all other organised armed groups are combined.

Comparability

UCDP counts in the same way in every war, so its figures can be compared between wars better than counts by the parties. They are usually lower than estimates that include indirect deaths, and they can differ from figures published by governments or armed groups.

Citation

Davies, Pettersson and Öberg (2026), Journal of Peace Research; Sundberg and Melander (2013), Journal of Peace Research 50(4); Hegre, Croicu, Eck and Högbladh (2020), Research and Politics. UCDP is funded through DEMSCORE (Swedish Research Council, grant 2021-00162). The data are licensed under CC BY 4.0.