El Salvador

El Salvador has a 1.4% 12-month probability of a new armed-conflict onset, placing it in the low-risk category. The country’s principal long-run exposure comes from its history of civil war, recurrent political polarisation, and organised criminal violence, while stronger state capacity and the absence of an active territorial insurgency support a contained-risk assessment.

Recent reporting supplied for 1 September 2026 provides no indication of a new armed mobilisation, cross-border attack, or sustained confrontation involving the government, opposition forces, gangs, or neighbouring states. The principal relevant actors remain the Salvadoran state and domestic criminal organisations; violence involving them would qualify only if it developed into sustained armed conflict, rather than continuing law-enforcement operations or isolated incidents.

The largest uncertainty is whether political or security pressure could produce organised armed resistance, particularly if state authority weakened or a major faction mobilised. Risk would rise with coordinated attacks, territorial seizure, defections by security forces, or external military involvement on Salvadoran soil; it would fall with continued state control and the absence of sustained armed group mobilisation.