Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 calls on the world to achieve peaceful and inclusive societiesand to significantly reduce all forms of violence and related deaths everywhere. An importantfirst step towards achieving SDG 16 is to understand conflict dynamics over time and acrosscontinents, as well as the types of violence employed by various actors. We take the lead in thiseffort by providing a global overview of conflict trends in this paper, as well as three associatedPRIO Papers on regional conflict trends (in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, respectively). Thisapproach enables us to look at cumulative global conflict trends and also to look beyond them,uncovering regional variations. In this PRIO Paper, we provide an empirically grounded overviewof global trends in conflict, non-violent resistance efforts, and sexual violence in armed conflict,which we hope can help policy and decision makers, practitioners, and regional and country experts to further understand the contexts they are working in.