United Nations ? After nearly five decades of steady increase, all forms of violent conflict except for terrorism have dropped rapidly since the end of the Cold War, according to a three-year study released Monday by a Canadian think tank.

The report attributes the decline to the end of both colonialism and the Cold War, and an upsurge in international peace-building activities.

“The conventional wisdom is that conflict is increasing, but more wars have ended than started since 1992,” said Andrew Mack, a former U.N. official who is director of the Human Security Center in Vancouver, British Columbia. “We pay attention to the wars that are starting, but not the wars that quietly end.”

The Human Security Report, funded by the governments of Canada, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and Britain, says that indirect effects of warfare, such as disease and displacement, can take a far greater toll than fighting.

The report shows dramatic changes in the patterns of political violence. The number of armed conflicts has dropped by more than 40 percent since 1992, it says, and conflicts with 1,000 or more battle deaths dropped by 80 percent.

In 1950, the average number of people killed in conflict per year was 38,000; in 2002, it was 600. That is partly because of the move from large-scale battles to targeted bombing. The figures, however, do not include millions killed in genocides, Mack said.