By Shahidur Rashid Talukdar,
The recently released World Bank report on Conflict, Security, and Development upholds the popular view that political instability and violence have serious repercussions on peace, progress, and prosperity. Violence, the World Development Report (WDR) 2011 asserts, poses the greatest threat to development. While poverty is on the decline for much of the world, WDR (2011) observes, countries affected by violence are lagging behind.
The multidimensional consequences of violence include human and socio-economic aspects. The costs can be both direct – loss of life, disability, and destruction and indirect – prevention from participation in economic activities, social and political instability, and massive displacement.
The most vulnerable groups in society, tied to their residences and places of work, are often most affected by violence. Besides the loss of livelihoods, poor child nutrition for those displaced or deprived from livelihoods due to violence has lasting effects, impairing physical and cognitive functioning. Destruction of school infrastructure, displacement of teachers, and interruptions of schooling seriously affect education of the entire generation of poor children.
Violence stands directly on the way of economic progress and development. Increased violence leads to development deficit. For countries affected by major violence such as battle deaths or excess deaths from homicides equivalent to a major war, poverty has actually increased in the recent years. Prolonged violence has long lasting effects. On average, a country experiencing major violence over the period (1981–2005), WDR reveals, had a poverty rate 21 percentage points higher than a country without violence.
The direct impact of violence falls primarily on young males, the majority of fighting forces, but women and children often suffer disproportionately from indirect effects. Men make up 96 percent of the detainee population and 90 percent of the missing, women and children comprise close to 80 percent of refugees and those internally displaced.
Sexual and gender-based violence remains a major problem, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected countries. The report finds that significant increases in gender-based violence follow a major war due mostly to breakdown of social and moral order and increased impunity. The threat and perpetration of sexual and physical violence against women and children can also be a systematic weapon of war—to dominate, to terrorize, to humiliate. Mass rapes have occurred in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Liberia, Peru, and Uganda.
And above all, violence begets violence: children who witness abuses have a higher tendency to perpetrate violence later in life. Hence, violence anywhere and anytime is a threat to development everywhere and every subsequent time.
The report goes further to outline the basic principles and country specific frameworks for sustained violence prevention and recovery. The basic principles include: Inclusion of diverse social groups and coalition with different political parties in matters of governance and establishing the basic institutional functions that provide citizen security, justice, and job. Practical approaches to confidence-building encompass: Promoting participatory processes, local security, justice, and development results, credible government appointments, and removal of discriminatory policies.
Though the recommendations are fairly open and have enough room for accommodation of situation specific adjustments, their implementation heavily relies on the existence of a credible government. And this is precisely the problem. The strength of the report, its open recommendations, stands as its weakness.
The foremost concern is to ensure a credible government. In the absence of micro-governance mechanisms, formation of credible governments at the national level seems infeasible. From the experiences of the Arab spring, in case of Egypt, Tunisia, and others, it looks even though one government can be toppled for its deficiencies, unless the society is prepared enough to adopt an open democratic system, opportunistic stakeholders may aspire to fill the gap. In such cases, the plight of the oppressed sections such as women, minorities, weaker tribes hardly changes.
As countries experiencing sustained pattern of violence and political instabilities lack effective and stable governments, there is a need to further prescribe how to form and sustain good governments. The recommendations would be more viable if some further practical steps, such as formation of local self governance units, inter-community coordination groups, and the role of religious and tribal leaders were emphasized.
The author is a Ph D student in Economics at Texas Tech University, USA. He blogs at http://glimpsesofatraveler.srtalukdar.com/