During World War One, 10% of all casualties were civilians.
During World War Two, the number of civilian deaths rose to 50%.
During the Vietnam war, 70% of all casualties were civilians.
In the war in Iraq, civilians account for up to 90% of all deaths.
- John Pilger (The War You Don't See)
This here curation of digitally-etched thoughts has become rather defunct in the last few months. To anyone who, by some curious miracle or other (besides you, Dad), has taken notice of my neglect - sorry! A mixture of revision, school, school ending forever (!), reading, life, work, and general blog-neglecting constitute my excuse. Anyway. I have been thinking lately about the relation between poverty and war, particularly in light of the fact that the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) reach their termination date this year (and it constitutes a large section in my Geography A Level).
Poverty is a multidimensional fact, hard to define and hence hard to address and, frankly, understand. I say 'fact' not cynically in allusion to its ensuing immortality, but with reference to its tenacious presence; there is always, as Thomas Malthus once suggested, inequality of some form, and, hence, relative poverty. He goes on to discuss how poverty is a relatively psychological as well as literal form, but, regardless, some form of poverty, however you like to define it, has always existed. A number of factors have been attributed to its cause including geographical factors of climate and natural disaster, historical implications of colonialism, political influences such as war and mismanagement of resources, and social factors such as inequality... and so the list proceeds. It is this lack of absolute, uniform veracity which makes it hard to address poverty. The MDGs are perhaps the most renowned global response to poverty, constituting 8 time-bound, quantified goals addressing the chief causes of poverty, and their lineal SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) aim to do much the same.
Some interesting ideas:
- The MDGs that address behavioural change are least likely to be met.
- If institution building and conflict resolution do not improve, around 0.5 billion people will remain below the international poverty line (living on less than US$1.25 a day) by 2030.
- According to the 2011 World Development Report, violence is increasingly the primary cause of poverty.