Guerra civil es la denominación usada para cualquier enfrentamiento bélico, donde los participantes están generalmente formados por dos ejes políticos contrarios. Su característica más común es que el conflicto armado se desarrolla en un mismo país, enfrentándose entre sí personas de un mismo lugar (ciudad, pueblo o comunidad) defendiendo, usualmente, dos ideologías o intereses distintos. En algunos casos, el objetivo es la secesión de una parte del territorio, aunque entonces no siempre se consideran «guerras civiles» (ejemplos de un tipo u otro pueden ser la guerra civil estadounidense o las guerras de descolonización). En este tipo de conflagración, se produce a veces la intervención de unidades extranjeras de distintos países, aparte, ayudando o colaborando con los distintos bandos de esa misma guerra civil, cuyos individuos llegan a ser voluntarios civiles que apoyan la ideología del bando seleccionado. En el siglo XIX, África ha sido escenario de numerosas guerras civiles en muchos de sus países debido generalmente a luchas por el poder de las etnias más importantes de cada país, llamadas «guerras olvidadas», puesto que son conocidas por el público solo cuando hay un genocidio o una gran masacre de personas.

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A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same state or country, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly united state.The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region or to change government policies.The term is a calque of the Latin bellum civile which was used to refer to the various civil wars of the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC. A civil war is a high-intensity conflict, often involving regular armed forces, that is sustained, organized and large-scale. Civil wars may result in large numbers of casualties and the consumption of significant resources. Most modern civil wars involve intervention by outside powers. According to Patrick M. Regan in his book Civil Wars and Foreign Powers (2000) about two thirds of the 138 intrastate conflicts between the end of World War II and 2000 saw international intervention, with the United States intervening in 35 of these conflicts. Civil wars since the end of World War II have lasted on average just over four years, a dramatic rise from the one-and-a-half-year average of the 1900–1944 period. While the rate of emergence of new civil wars has been relatively steady since the mid-19th century, the increasing length of those wars has resulted in increasing numbers of wars ongoing at any one time. For example, there were no more than five civil wars underway simultaneously in the first half of the 20th century while there were over 20 concurrent civil wars close to the end of the Cold War. Since 1945, civil wars have resulted in the deaths of over 25 million people, as well as the forced displacement of millions more. Civil wars have further resulted in economic collapse; Somalia, Burma (Myanmar), Uganda and Angola are examples of nations that were considered to have promising futures before being engulfed in civil wars.

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