From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERToday, though the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and theRussian war in Chechnya may appear to buck the trend, poverty andgreed, not geopolitics, are the common denominators in the world’swars, and domestic politics remains the crucial factor in how suchconflicts play out. From 1945 to 1989, just over a third of the world’sconflicts were in low-income developing countries; since then it hasbeen more than half. 135 By 2000, some 100,000 Africans a year werebeing killed in wars, more than in the rest of the world’s conflictscombined. 136 Countries with the lowest GDP per capita are nowalmost four times more likely to suffer conflicts than those with percapita GDP of $5,000 or above. 137Conflict is contagious, as war-torn countries drag down theirneighbours with a combination of refugees, economic collapse, illegalcross-border arms trading, and violence that spills across borders, ashas happened between the countries of Central and East Africa inrecent years. By one calculation, the average civil war costs a countryand its neighbours a phenomenal $64bn. 138In a devastating downward cycle, conflict destroys nationaleconomies, deepens poverty, and sows the seeds of further violence.Most of the world’s poorest countries (22 out of 32) and most of thecountries failing to reduce child mortality (30 out of 52) have been atwar at one time or another since 1990. 139 According to one study bythe International Rescue Committee, infant mortality in western DRCwas only marginally worse than in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa in2002; in the war-torn east of the country, it was twice as high. 140Conflict both feeds and is fed by inequality. Civil wars are generallymore likely to erupt in countries that have severe and growinginequalities between ethnic or regional groups, such as those prevailingbetween the Hutu and Tutsi peoples prior to the Rwandan genocide of1994. Violent crime is generally more likely where there are deep gapsbetween individuals, as in Latin America. In many places, both typesof inequality co-exist, with devastating consequences. In turn, conflictdrives up inequality because it particularly harms the weakest andmost vulnerable members of society – marginalised groups such asethnic or religious minorities, or vulnerable groups within the rest ofsociety, such as elderly or disabled people, or children.278