International Relations
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Nowadays, the world is becoming more and more closely linked. Thanks to technological improvements and the information revolution, there are no more barriers between countries as describes Thomas L. Friedman in the article “It is a flat world, after all”. Trade has increased and population movements between countries are greater than ever before. However, billions of people still live in poverty and the gap between rich and poor at a global level is expanding. That is why there is an urgent need to consider the worrying situation developing countries meet. Many reasons for helping poor countries are evoked: humanitarian, political, diplomatic and economic. The quote develops another explanation. The reason for which many countries have to help poorer ones may be a question of global security. Due to the interconnectedness of the societies, difficult situations such as conflicts, famines in poor countries influence and jeopardize the security in rich countries like the United States and the European Union. Consequently, their problems become our problems. We cannot act any more as if we did not know. The threats are multiple such as terrorism, trafficking, environmental devastation and disease. As these threats are impending, governments of developed countries should take more responsibility for helping the poorer nations for a safer world. As a result, I think that our security depends on the fight against poverty.
There is a perception of growing disparities between the rich and the poor countries. We can illustrate the global North/South gap by this data: the North contains only 20% of the world’s people but 60% of its goods and services (Goldstein, p.21). The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a way of measuring the size of the economy for one country, in other words the size of the total annual economic activity for one country. For instance the GDP per capita in 2006 for the North was $28,000 whereas it was only $5,500 for the South (Goldstein, p.21). The North includes the industrialized rich countries and the South the less-developed poor countries. The distribution of wealth is not fair whether it is in the world or in a region or a country. Globalization enables the increasing of wealth and prosperity but not in an equitable way. As we can read in the article “Can the extreme poverty be eliminated?” written by Jeffrey D. Sachs, today there are 1.1 billion people who live on $1 or less a day; this statistic represents nearly one in six humans. This indigent population encounters many problems such as poor nutrition, non-potable drinking water, shelter, basic sanitation, health care services and education. Every day more than 20 000 die of extreme poverty, lack of food or medicine and unsafe drinking water. These populations in Africa, Latin America and South Asia are outside of the global economy prosperity and outside of scientific and technological progress. International trade and foreign investments inflows are scarce in these regions of the world. They do not have the economic and educational infrastructures to compete with the developed countries because they lack financial means. These parts of the world are still isolated in spite of communication progress. For this reason, the poorest regions do not have access to scientific and technological advances, and they struggle with infectious diseases and AIDS, which have devastating consequences for the population. More than 600 million people are infected with tropical diseases (Goldstein, p. 273) and two-thirds of HIV infected people live in Africa and half of the rest in South Asia. The epidemic has also left 15 million orphans (Goldstein, p. 351).
These disparities in wealth in our world create a variety of international security problems with the potential for violence, including terrorist attacks on rich countries by groups in poor countries. I think that extreme poverty fuels revolution, terrorism and anti Western sentiments in the developing countries.
Is there a relationship between poverty and conflict? The theory of structural violence tries to explain this relationship. It is a form of violence which corresponds with the systematic ways in which a given social structure or social institution kills people slowly by oppressed them and by preventing them from meeting their basic needs, such as hunger, health care and education (Goldstein, p.97). Structural violence inevitably produces conflict and often direct violence including family violence, racial violence, hate crimes, terrorism, genocide and finally war. This existing violence in the society linked with poverty lead to riots in the streets and political instability as we recently saw in Kenya. Weak governments and no-law zones become a temptation for terrorist groups. Sometimes, these groups develop anti-Western feelings. They do not want to have any kind of relationship with western countries or in the worst case; they develop a big sentiment of injustice and have resentment towards Westerners. Thus, if we look at a map of wars in progress, we can see a causal link between present warfare and lack of basic needs. Currently, there are conflicts in Colombia, Burma, and India, and in several countries in Africa, notably in Sudan, Nigeria, Chad and Somalia. All these countries are localized in the Third World. But it is not easy to say if the fact to be poor makes a society more pro-war or the contrary, if being in state of war hinders a society to have a high standard of living. War causes great damage in poor societies, emerging economic infrastructures are destroyed. War lowers the confidence in economic and political stability whereas foreign investments and trade depend on this stability. For me, the correlation is true in both ways. War is often part of a vicious circle for states unable to lift out of poverty (Goldstein, p. 273).
There is no doubt that poverty in less-developed countries has an impact on our society by means of conflicts, wars but also piracy, migration, human and drug trafficking. Over the past few years, there is a resurgence in acts of piracy in Africa. Currently, a French cruise yacht is taken hostage along the coast of Somalia. The pirates ask for a ransom and in exchange they will free the crew hostages. This situation jeopardizes the security of people from a rich country in this region.
Migrants leave their poor country in the hope to find a better life; in other words, a work, a shelter and a safe place for themselves and their family in a richer country. They come most of the time illegally in industrialized states and compete for jobs with low-skill workers in the host country. Most often they meet racism, discrimination and inhumane conditions in their new country. Approximately, 700 00 people are annually trafficked across international borders against their will and they are bought and sold