The Impact of Intercommunal Violence - Assignment Example

I. Intercommunal Violence and its Impact on Women and Children According to Schultz and Pfaltzgraff (2000), intercommunal violence appears to be programmed response of unbalanced societies seeking to ‘right themselves’ and that the formula may prove as simple as high school physics. (p. 62) The epidemic feeds on itself, with intercommunal violence taking over more victims on both sides (or on multiple sides), constantly upping the ante. You go from a backstreet confrontation, to a pogrom, to an ethnic cleansing campaign and civil war, to attempted extermination and regional destabilization – roughly the pattern in the former Yugoslavia, in the multiple murder fests in the Caucasus and Transcaucasus, in the Indian neighborhood and the likes. The alternative pattern is state- or leadership-sponsored genocide, as in much of Africa, in Armenian holocaust, in Germany’s culturally suicidal campaign against the Jews, in regional efforts against the Kurds, in Chinese efforts against minorities, in Afghan treatment of women, and so on. Scholars have endeavored to trace the sources of intercommunal violence and to suggest what might be the cause and preconditions of the incidence of such phenomenon. Sabrina Petra Ramel (2005) listed some of the popular reasons which include bad leadership such as what happened in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s as well as the use of the media and of other means of propaganda in order to change the way people view one another and treat one another. (p. 138) In Coite d’Ivoire, rebels and government alike commit intercommunal violence in their battle for supremacy and control. For instance, among the atrocities committed by the rebels include extortion and pillaging of goods while individuals suspected to be government collaborators, sympathizers and spies are summarily executed, tortured and raped. (Human Rights Watch 2006, p. 87) Among the brutalities committed, and the suffering experienced by innocents, which made it possible for neighbors to turn on each other with such violence, are chronicled by contemporary historians. Fundamentalism There are instances when intercommunal violence is considered within the framework of a self-fulfilling religious prophecy. This is true in the Arab-Israeli conflict, where Jewish extremists, just like Arab extremists, are certain today that the other side is out to kill them and are doing their best to strike first. “There is consequently a vicious circle of violence and counter violence in the [Israeli] occupied territories which plays directly into the hands of the extremists of both sides.” (Marty 1993, p. 485) Growing ethnic diversity tends to foster intercommunal conflict and violence, but usually only in conjunction with other aggravating factors. In some countries waves of refugees from neighboring countries have upset a sensitive ethnic balance and have caused the outbreak of violence. The growing ethnic heterogeneity of societies around the world has prompted some to predict that incidence of intercommunal violence will further increase in the very near future. (Bryn jar 2005, p. 153) Victims During civil wars or intercommunal conflicts, distinctions between civilians and soldiers, men and women, adults and children, become blurred when acts of violence are perpetrated by armed individuals. This is aggravated by the fact that agents involved in the atrocities of intercommunal violence are not subject to authority but instead are driven by ancient hatreds and the tensions out of communal living and with passions sometimes driven by mutual fear. Far back in history in the brutal malefactor throughout the Hundred Years War, for instance, defenseless people were not spared, including pilgrims, women and children. During this time, in the diocese of Lund, cases of rape, murder and robbery were chronicled. In the more contemporary example, we have the case of ethnic cleansing which, in one way or another, found its way in several nations such as Germany, China, and the Moslem states. The “RAM Plan” in Serbia for instance, was designed to destroy the Bosnian economy and ridding the country of the Muslim population by killing half of them. (Benvinisti 2002, p. 125) Here, the strategy of ethnic cleansing was undertaken by means of a systematic campaign directed against the most vulnerable elements in the Muslim religious and social structure, that is, women, especially young ones, and children. Meron Benvenisti provides us a chilling account: To that end a fighting force was assembled, consisting of 80 percent common criminals and 20 percent fanatical nationalists, who committed wholesale rape, killed children before their parents’ eyes, annihilated a large portion of the male population, and wrought havoc on Muslim communities, with the aim of causing first of all fear and then panic, leading to a probable retreat from the territories involved in war activities. (p. 125) Objects of intercommunal violence are usually forced to flee and take refuge in other countries. The history of the Jews in Europe during the holocaust is one example. We also have the Palestinian exodus – a case born out of the intercommunal violence and its campaigns of organized terror, rape, and systematic murders in order to expel civilians from a particular territory other than military objectives. The United Nations is the leading international organizations, which step in the way in serious cases of intercommunal violence. We turn to the experience of Cyprus, as an example. The unsuccessful British efforts to restore peace in the country amid the daily occurrence of intercommunal violence prompted the United Nations to establish a peace keeping force in 1964. The Cypriot incident became the basis of, perhaps, the first internationally coordinated action against intercommunal violence. Clive Schoefield (1994) explained that in 1966 when the fighting and intercommunal violence in the country had been brought to a conclusion, the role of the United Nations was extensively discussed by the UN Security Council. (p. 47) Here, the issue on maintaining a peacekeeping force anchored on peace-building objectives was given its mandate to help avoid the catastrophe which happened in Cyprus in the future. Third party role on intercommunal violence, such as that assumed by the UN was sometimes viewed as futile amid cases where the parties involved in the conflict are uncooperative. Perhaps, the reason is that the UN’s objective, as previously explained is more on peace-building initiative than a more forceful militaristic intervention. However, one should remember that, no matter what the outcome is, people and nations involved in intercommunal conflicts must engage in negotiations when the UN steps in. There is currently an existing UN framework that governs intercommunal violence and it is expected that this would be revised, along with other UN policies on intercommunal violence, as the world body addresses new needs as well as pitfalls in the course of its experience. II. To what extent is essential welfare provision in very poor countries determined by international financial decision making? In the global arena, writes Branco Milanovic (2005), financial decision-making is more on plutocratic that even partly democratic. (p. 151) This is significant, especially for poor countries because financial decision makers dictate domestic policies which, in turn, affect their respective welfare provisions, because of concessions and conditions bordering from indirect influence to outright intervention made possible via loans, foreign direct investment and financial aids. Essentially, our point is that money that should be spent in raising the welfare of the poor is spent elsewhere and the international financial decision makers typically have a hand on this phenomenon. We particularly cite the International Monetary Fund as the major force behind the prevailing current arrangements in global institutions regarding financial policies that impact the poorer countries. We see the significance in the purpose of the organization’s existence. The International Monetary Fund was created in order to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability among its members, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce the incidence of poverty. (“IMF” 2007) Along with the World Bank, it is a primary source of loans among poor countries. In exchange for the financial assistance, these institutions impose upon the borrowers certain reforms, which are often in areas of exchange rate policies. As discussed elsewhere in this paper, these institutions have less favorable perspective on welfare provisions for poor countries. Scarritt and Chan (2002) stressed that in these organizations’ perspective, welfare programs-spending hurts export competitiveness indirectly due to the ‘deadweight’ loss of resources that could have been put to the promotion of efficient production. (p. 146) This also becomes dangerous when the IMF and the World Bank’s biases become prominent. For example, votes that implied by the distribution of world income is not surprising if we reflect that the IMF formula that is used to calculate each country’s votes is based on total GDP as expressed at market exchange rates (which reduces the share of the poor countries whose exchange rates are low) and the country’s trade. (Milanovich, p. 151) But it illustrates well that the current arrangements in global institutions that do matter are very far from the rules that prevail within nation-states, where voting rights, if not necessarily real political power, are not proportional to one’s wealth or income. As critics point out powerful and rich countries with a number of voting powers may use their influence to gain advantage in international trade and impose upon the poorer countries the policies which hurt domestic welfare spending. Modern Trade Theory International trade has strong effects on the distribution of income, often producing losers as well as winners. And so, those people behind its regulation, those decision makers behind the flow of capital and investments also affect the essential welfare provisions in a poor country because of the flow of wealth. The dynamics of the global trade today are subject to intense scrutiny in order to find a pattern of economic progress – a system where the benefits of increased trade increased a country’s wealth and its chances to spend more on welfare programs for its people. Today, globalization is the prevailing economic system and that has, as Luigi Girard (2003) put it, generally positive economic dimension and a social dimension which, taken overall, is negative. (p. 7) The nature of the free market which is magnified a hundredfold with the concept of globalization, give rise to the progressive growth of marginality, of poverty, inequality, uneven distribution of wealth and underscores the failure of the global governance, especially among the community of poor countries to meet the challenge of this economic process. While globalization has generated a considerable amount of wealth, the trickle of benefits as previously mentioned, is rather patchy. Girard argued a strong case by saying that the strong players on the globalization stage are the great multinationals and that as a result, they are now a major factor in public policymaking mainly due to what has come to be called as international competitiveness. (p. 7) This highlights the systems incongruence with welfare programs. For instance, a state freed from labor-market intervention would be able to devote resources to raising national output and promoting competitiveness. In the whole equation, domestic welfare concerns is subordinate to creating a conducive environment for foreign investors. The World Bank’s perspective in this regard, for example, is that welfare spending is inversely related to export competitiveness. (Scarritt & Chan 2002, p. 146) The early years of the globalization boom was marked by the flow of FDI to poor countries with cheap labors. This is where welfare provisions are at the minimum where profit-making motives is not hampered. The activities of firms, which sought to establish sweatshops in those countries with low or weakly enforced labor standards, were hence noted to have reached a feverish pitch. (Benveniste, Nolte, & Barak-Erez 2004, p. 247) Middle Eastern Oil I should like to mention that in my opinion, the Middle Eastern oil and its development policies and its influence on international financial decisions is also a significant factor in international financial policymaking. The direct effect is clear in the impact of the oil price fluctuations. For poor countries, this is felt in price rises for other commodities even in those that do not belong to the energy sector. Koopman, Reszat and Matthies (1989) underscored this fact, explaining that in one of the oil crisis, the price index for commodities more than doubled. (p. 179) And we have Peter Flora and Arnold Heidenheimer (1981) to remind us that because of the comparatively high rate of cost of inflation, it affects the direct public provision of services, an important part of rising health needs. (p. 321) Hence, the oil market volatility, the OPEC – its financial and other policy decisions - is central to international economic policies that dictate on poorer countries domestic affairs as well as influence their respective welfare spending programs. Movements in this front are closely watched among the world’s policymakers both from the rich and the poor countries alike. The rich has less to worry about, while the community of poor countries would be the hardest hit given the poor’s scant resources to cushion the impact of successive oil price hikes due to an oil crisis and an incidence of an OPEC cartel such as what happened in the past. References Benvenisti, M., 2002. Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948. University of California Press. Benveniste, E., Nolte, G., and Barak-Erez, D., 2004. The Welfare State, Globalization and International Law. Springer. Brynjar, L., 2005. Globalisation and the Future of Terrorism: Patterns and Predictions. UK: Routledge Flora, P. and Heidenheimer, A., 1981. The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America. Transaction Publishers. Girard, L., 2003. The Human Sustainable City. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. Human Rights Watch, 2006. Human Rights Watch World Report 2006. Seven Stories Press "International Monetary Fund (IMF)," 2007. Wikipedia. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMF) [cited 12 May 2007] Koopman, G., Reszat, B., and Matthies, K., 1989. Oil and the International Economy. Transaction Publishers. Marty, M. and Appleby, S., 1993. Fundamentalism and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies, and Militancy. University of Chicago Press. Milanovic, B., 2005. Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality. Princeton University Press. Ramer, S., 2005. Thinking About Yugoslavia: Scholarly Debates about the Yugoslav Breakup and the Wars in Bosnia. Cambridge University Press. Scarritt, J., and Chan, S., 2002. Coping with Globalization: Cross-national Patterns in Domestic Governance and Policy Performance. Schoefield, C., 1994. Global Boundaries. UK: Routledge. Schultz, R., and Pfaltzgraff, R., 2000. The Role of Naval Forces in 21st Century Operation. Brasseys. Read More