From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERgovernment in question, which would screen and choose the internationalrelief organisations best suited to its needs.For the foreseeable future, millions of poor people and theircommunities will continue to depend on international help to copewith chronic vulnerability or to get them through disasters that areseldom of their own making. Success in this effort switches off agrinding engine of deepening inequality, suffering, and poverty.Helping people in such situations is a hugely complex and challengingtask, combining the immediate need to relieve suffering and preventdeaths with the longer-term effort to rebuild states and enable peopleto retake control of their own lives. The international system that hasgrown up around this task has its share of problems, but in recentyears there has been notable progress in achieving a fast, co-ordinatedresponse. The prize could not be greater.PEACE, WAR, AND THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECTIn Oxfam’s long experience of providing relief in conflict zones, it haslearned that protection from violence can often be even more urgentthan the provision of clean water, food, or shelter. As Part 4 showed,conflict hits poor people and communities the hardest, driving upinequality and making them more vulnerable to other risks such asdrought or disease.International attitudes to such civilian ‘collateral damage’, oftencaused by armies that deliberately target unarmed civilians, arechanging after a prolonged effort to change attitudes and beliefs aboutviolence. Under international humanitarian law, warring parties haveparticular obligations to limit harm to civilians and to protect the livesand security of people in their territories, as well as their access toessential services. When states and others are unable or unwilling tofulfil their responsibilities, international law demands that all statesmust take action.One of the reasons why the UN was founded was to avert warand limit abuses by combatants. This function was made more explicitin 2005, when world leaders agreed that every government had a‘responsibility to protect’ its population from genocide, war crimes,crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. Crucially, it added that392