Cause Of Conflict Essay

Poverty and political, social, and economic inequalities between groups predispose to conflict; policies to tackle them will reduce this risk

Eight out of 10 of the world's poorest countries are suffering, or have recently suffered, from large scale violent conflict. Wars in developing countries have heavy human, economic, and social costs and are a major cause of poverty and underdevelopment. The extra infant deaths caused by the war in Cambodia, for example, were estimated to be 3% of the country's 1990 population.1 Most current conflicts, such as in the Sudan or the Congo, are within states, although there is often considerable outside intervention, as in Afghanistan. In the past 30 years Africa has been especially badly affected by war

For this reason, there is a tendency to attribute wars to “primordial” ethnic passions, which makes them seem intractable. This view is not correct, however, and diverts attention from important underlying economic and political factors.

Although a person's culture is partly inherited it is also constructed and chosen, and many people have multiple identities.2 Many of the ethnic identities in Africa that today seem to be so strong were “invented” by the colonial powers for administrative purposes and have only weak origins in precolonial Africa.3 Their boundaries are generally fluid, and they have rightly been described as “fuzzy