Violence and Poverty
By Ezat Mossallanejad, Ph.D.
Based on our experience at the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture (CCVT), there is a potential link between poverty and violence. Where abject poverty causes human life to lose its value, death may emerge as an unquestionable demonstration of honor, courage, loyalty, and moral character. This can bring about a vicious circle of violence.
Modern wars are characteristically wars against civilians, particularly children. During the 60 years since World War II, the world has witnessed more than 150 major conflicts, of which 130 have occurred in countries of the South where people suffer from abject poverty, tyranny and ethnic conflicts. (1) Civilian casualties that accounted for only 10% of all casualties during World War I have since increased to 90% today and 80 per cent of these are women and children.
The nature of civil war dictates that fighting takes place where people live, rather than on a battleground. Following the end of the Cold War (1990 to 2003), ethnic hatred has targeted all members of hostile groups, specifically women and children.
It was in 1996 that Graça Machel proposed the immunity of children within armed conflicts: “Let us claim children as ‘zones of peace.’ In this way humankind will finally declare that childhood is inviolate and that all children must be spared the pernicious effects of armed conflicts.” (2) Thirteen years have passed and the plight of war-affected children have exacerbated beyond imagination.
The atmosphere of war and violence may lead to the total destruction of infrastructure with the result of further underdevelopment and ever-increasing impoverishment. The ugly monster of war has forced thousands of young girls to accept the risk of HIV/AIDS and get involved in “survival sex” in exchange for money or food.
In every corner of the world, war is taking its toll on children and robbing them of their childhood. In some conflict zones, the fighting is older than the children are.
Here are the words of 14-year-old Linda, a child uprooted by armed conflict in Angola:
“All of us suffer here all the time. We’re all dirty. We have to save our money just to buy water from tanker trucks. The amount we can afford isn’t enough for anything. Our clothes are filthy rags. I don’t sleep well. We have to lay out pieces of paper on the ground and lie on them. I used to study in my hometown but I don’t go to school here because I have to look after my brothers and sisters while my parents go to look for work. I’d like to live like normal people. I’d like to have a house and clothes like them, and to be able to study the same things that they study. I’d like to go home but I don’t think it’s safe to go back yet; I think we will have to stay here a long time. I want there to be peace.” (3)
In Iraq, before the coalition occupation, children under the age of 5 were dying at more than twice the rate they were 10 years before. (4) War, occupation and terrorist attacks have exacerbated the plight of children beyond imagination.
Both Palestinian and Israeli children suffer as a result of the present conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Palestinian children have particularly suffered due to Israeli collective punishment of the Palestinian population including house demolitions. The latter has left thousands of Palestinian children permanently homeless. They have been deprived of living a normal life due to closures, roadblocks and curfews.
Thousands of women and girls were raped and abducted by Janjawid, nomadic militia supported by the government of Sudan. The notorious Janjawid resorted to mass rapes, including gang rape of school children. They burned villages and massacred civilians while supported by the bombardments of Sudanese warplanes. (5)
More than 200 million landmines are stockpiled in the arsenals of 87 countries. Landmines cost as little as US$3 to produce. Clearing one landmine can cost up to US$1,000. Despite the existence of a Mine Ban Treaty, landmines kill or maim around 20,000 people annually. (6) Over 80 percent of landmine victims are civilians – one third of them are children and 90% of them have no access to medical care. (7)
In a nutshell, children are innocent victims of all wars. Even if children are not killed or injured, they can be orphaned, abducted, raped and left with psychological distress from direct exposure to violence, dislocation, poverty or the loss of loved ones. Those who survive often find themselves enveloped in a battle for survival of a different kind – against disease, inadequate shelter, a lack of basic services and poor nutrition.
It is a well-known fact that children have a powerful sense of imitation. In conflict zones, they are at risk of imitating violence committed by belligerent forces. They see a gun as a source of power and therefore the solution to all problems. They internalize the indoctrination that killing is a short-cut to overcome all difficulties. This is a great danger to the future peace within communities when children of war grow into a generation of adults. They may approach war or violence as the universal solution to all problems. This perpetuates the vicious circle of violence and poverty.
In a state of war or ethnic conflict, where certain people are regarded as enemies, torture, rape, sexual slavery and similar crimes of international nature can be justified and even sanctioned by both the government and extremist groups. These ghoulish atrocities are sanctioned as a result of demonizing the enemy, not considering them as human beings. According to Ignatius Martin-Baro:
“War implies social polarization, the displacement of groups toward opposite extremes. A critical split is produced in the framework of coexistence, leading to a radical differentiation between ‘them’ and ‘us’…People, actions and things are no longer valued in and of themselves….Thus the basis for daily interaction disappears.” (8)
In war-ravaged areas and in regions that suffer from generalized violence, tyrannical regimes, paramilitary groups and warlords have joined hands to contribute towards the destruction of humanitarian system of values. According to the Irish writer, William Butler Yeats:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. (9)
The outcome of this sinister scenario is the abject poverty and deprivation for overwhelming majority of the population who are innocent victims of war and violence. The story does not end here. One can remark with some reservations that with the passage of time, it is possible to reconstruct war-ravaged areas or compensate for the war’s human and material damages. It is, however, impossible to repair the universal values that once united the grass-root people. The most valuable asset that the human family can lose is the system of values that distinguishes between the things that are acceptable and those that are unacceptable. War and violence bring about deterioration of values at all levels.
People in a poor underdeveloped regions may keep a high quality life by consolidating their strong solidarity under a natural economy. They may share and enjoy their scare resources and maintain their happiness through different community activities. This cannot happen any more when the war and violence reduce the entire region to a gigantic slaughterhouse devoid of all recognizable human values.
The ongoing massacre of vulnerable civilians; women, children and elders alike, and the destruction of houses, crops and livestock are justified by both sides as “collateral damages,” or the inevitable price that must be paid for “freedom.” Attitudes as such may act as contagious disease ending up in the creation of a culture of violence. This inhumane culture has the potential to entrap the whole community in a vicious circle of violence, poverty and further violence.
History has witnessed frequent attempts by good-hearted and enlightened people to overcome the vicious circle of violence and poverty. What we need today is over-all, consistent and dedicated efforts by all of us whether living in the North of in the South. We are limbs in a body of humanity whole-related. We need to combine our forces in an attempt to strengthen the international instruments against poverty and violence simultaneously. We must maintain a link between civil and political rights on the one hand and economic, social and cultural rights on the other. This will be impossible without the termination of the present gap between haves and have-nots at the national and global levels. Peace will be an illusion without global justice.
Advanced industrial nations should stop exporting instruments of torture, weapons of death and technology of violence. They should be proactive and allocate adequate resources to address the root causes of poverty and violence in poor countries of the South. Death Penalty must be abolished, as it is the most extreme method of violence. If the world intends to live without violence, a culture of peace and non-violence needs to be fostered at a grass-roots level. As relevant today as they were more than half a century ago are the words of Mahatma Gandhi: “Absolute immorality has to be pacified by the rule of absolute morality”.
Notes
1. United Nations Children Fund, UNICEF Actions on Behalf of Children Affected by Armed Conflict, unicef, August 2000, p. 2.
2. Graça Machel Report, Impact of Armed Conflict on Children 1996, para. 318.
3. As quoted in Save the Children Fund, War Brought Us Here: Protecting Children Displaced within Their Own Countries by Conflict, 2000, P.23.
4. Footnote No. 2, p. 51.
5. Amnesty International Report 2005, the state of the world’s human rights, p. 2.
6. The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction (the “Mine Ban Treaty”) entered into force in March 1999. By September 2004, 143 countries had acceded to the treaty. p. 54.
7. International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Landmine Monitor Report 1999 and Landmine Monitor Report 2002, and the Landmine Service Network, as cited in UNICEF 2005, p. 46.
8. See Ignacio Martin-Baro,. Writings for a Liberation Psychology. A. Aron and S. Caron, eds. Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, 1994. Ignacio Martin-Baro was a Jesuit priest and psychologist who was born in Spain and lived among poor peasants in El Salvador. In November 1989, he was brutally murdered along with five other Jesuit priests and their housekeeper and her daughter by a special unit of the Salvadoran army. As the executions of the Jesuits began, Martin-Baro’s voice was heard over the staccato reports of automatic weapons: “This is an injustice!” As a brilliant scholar, Martin-Baro carried out pioneering studies on the impacts of war and tyranny on the human psyche.
9. William Butler Yeats, “Falling Apart,” The Literature Network: www.online-literature.com/yeats.