From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERinferior on the grounds of social, ethnic, or religious difference, andtherefore without the rights that the perpetrators claim for themselves.In the Moluccan islands of Indonesia in 1999 a dispute betweena Muslim youth and a Christian bus-driver in Ambon city rapidlyescalated into fighting that displaced 400,000 people, many of themfor years. Periodic communal violence along religious lines hasplagued India ever since independence.Such prejudice can be manipulated for political gain anywhere inthe world – in Colombia to legitimise the murder of civilians allegedlycollaborating with guerrillas, in Darfur to set ‘Arabs’ against ‘Africans’,in Iraq to stoke conflicts between Shia and Sunni communities, and inthe Western media to deny basic rights to those branded ‘terrorists’.However, such divisions can be turned around through efforts bygovernments and the communities concerned. Since 1994, there hasbeen remarkable progress in Rwanda in bridge building betweenHutu and Tutsi communities. Similar efforts elsewhere, such asbetween Palestinians and Israelis, may not yet have reduced conflict,but are certainly part of any long-term solution.In practice, there is no neat dividing line between war and peace.The self-reinforcing cycle of poverty and violence makes it particularlydifficult for poor countries to escape from conflict, even after ‘peace’has been officially signed. Although the DRC has supposedly been atpeace since 2002, violence has continued, even after successful electionsin 2006, and 2007 saw an upsurge of attacks on civilians, includingmass displacements and reports of widespread sexual violence. This isfar from unique: 40 per cent of countries collapse into war within fiveyears of signing peace deals. 146 Even when all-out conflict is avoided,armed violence is a genie that is extraordinarily difficult to put backinto the bottle, spilling over into domestic and sexual violence andviolent crime, especially when there are no viable new livelihoods forthe young men who previously lived from war. El Salvador andGuatemala, for example, ended civil wars in the 1990s, only to see aproliferation of gangs, kidnap rings, and other forms of violent crime,often involving demobilised soldiers and police.Wars and other complex emergencies represent the failure of politicalleaders to resolve social and economic problems. Their failure is inpart due to the inability of national governments, particularly in poor280