[ 2011-04-13 ]

World Bank Report: 1.5 billion people live with violence
Some 1.5 billion people live in countries affected
by repeated cycles of political and criminal
violence, causing misery and disrupting
development, the World Bank has said.

The countries affected by conflict and extreme
criminal violence fall far behind in development
and worsening the poverty situation in the low
income countries making it difficult for them to
achieve a single Millennium Development Goal
(MDG).

These are contained in the 2011 World Development
Report released on Monday by the World Bank.

The World Development Report Dubbed: “Conflict,
Security and Development” said some 42 million
people out of the number were displaced as a
result of conflict, violence and human rights
abuses, with 15 million being refugees outside
their country.

The report says: “To break these cycles, it is
crucial to strengthen legitimate national
institutions and governance in order to provide
citizen security, justice and jobs to alleviate
international stresses that increase the risks of
violent conflict.”

According to the report, more than 90 per cent of
civil wars in the 2000s occurred in countries that
already experienced a civil war 30 years earlier.

The report noted that without a basic level of
citizen security there could not be enduring
social and economic development, adding that
without a sufficiently broad coalition based on
confidence in improved justice and shared economic
prospects, it was difficult to sustain the
momentum of change.

The report said exceptional efforts were needed to
restore confidence in national leaders’ ability
to manage the crisis through a combination of
actions that signalled a break with the past and
gestures that locked in these actions, thus giving
people confidence that they would not be
reversed.

According to the report, youth unemployment,
inequality between social, ethnic, regional or
religious groups, economic shocks as well as
infiltration of trafficking networks and foreign
security interference were some of the negative
effects.

It observed the current system of diplomatic,
security and development institutions designed to
address the problem of interstate and civil war
had helped many countries to recover from civil
war.

The report called for the need to invest in
prevention through confidence-building, citizen
security, justice and jobs, reforming internal
agency procedure to manage risks and results,
acting regionally and globally on external
stresses, and marshalling the combined experience
and resources of low, middle and high income
countries in tackling violence.

Source - GNA

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