A Humanitarian Emergency: War, Genocide, and Displacement

Abstract

Recently the media have focused on the threat of insurgents in failed states with weapons of mass destruction to the rich of the United States, Canada, and Europe. Scholars predict an inevitable clash between the West and Islam. Amid these perils to the West, we should not forget that war, state violence, and rebel resistance threaten the livelihoods and voices of millions of poor in Africa and Asia. About 20 per cent of Africans live in countries seriously disrupted by war or state violence. The cost of conflict includes refugee flows, increased military spending, damage to transport and communication, reduction in trade and investment, and diversion of resources from development. The World Bank (2000a, pp. 57–9) estimates that a civil war in an African country lowers GDP per capita by 2.2 percentage points annually. Scholars must focus on reducing this danger to the survival income and human rights of the world’s poorest.