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Civil War in Developing Countries

Essay by   •  January 18, 2012  •  Research Paper  •  2,616 Words (11 Pages)  •  2,634 Views

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'War', the word, which itself explain disasters, death, battle and unfair things which are difficult to recover to the normal conditions in the short span. A civil war can be defined as a is a war between two or many organized groups within the same nation state or republic or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation state. The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies. Originally it is the Latin bellum civile which was used to refer to the various civil wars of the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC. It is a high-intensity conflict, often involving regular armed forces, that is sustained, organized and large-scale. Civil wars may result in large numbers of casualties and the consumption of significant resourcesAorund the worls, civil wars already killed more than 20 million people and displaced at least 67 million.

Many international organisations like World Bank, Asian Development Bank, United Nations, Europian Union are focussing to minimise the probability of occurring World War and Civil Wars (World Bank report, Understanding Civil War). Although the scale of war is different, the outcome is hilarious. Historically, there is always a conflict between few well-known countries since past few decades which are recorded as a civil war. For eg. Indonesian and Nigeria are both oil-rich states with much violence throughout their history. Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo put in perspective of resource-dependence and ethnic diversity. In both these countries, there is a concentration of political power on tertiary. Another famous example is for Bosnia and Indonesia which always had a conflict abased on the regional inequality and ethnic differences across regions. The similar ethnic differences are found between Algeria and Kenya. Lebanon, Mozambique, and Sudan are cases in which external military or economic interventions played central roles in the civil wars.

Economically, the Civil War was not a contest between equals. Not only are there important spatial effects (diffusion and contagion) that explain violence, but there is also a dynamic relationship between the organization of criminal networks and the pursuit of political agendas in civil wars (such as those in the Caucasus as well as Algeria). These cases illustrate the effects of state capacity. Russia and Colombia explore the links between political and criminal violence. In Northern Ireland, extreme violence was avoided largely as a result of substantial state capacity. In Kenya, war might have been avoided because of substantial state capacity to repress opposition (though not the case with intercommunal violence in Kenya). The mechanisms through which state capacity operates to reduce the risk of civil war are pivotal in the analysis, since those mechanisms differ in economically developed and underdeveloped states. Macedonia, although state capacity was low, a war was averted largely as a result of substantial external assistance and a generally open regime. Several cases in both volumes highlight the role of external intervention in inciting and supporting civil war.

Developing and Developed Country

On broad level, the terms developing and developed countries or developing and developed city are frequently used to indicate the economical, social, infrastructure, health and education conditions. This practice was initially started by World Bank by defining the country level on the basis of per capita income rate.

1. A high income country is defined by the world bank as a country with a gross national income per capita of $11,116 or more

2. While the term "high income" may be used interchangeably with "first world" and "developed country," the technical definitions of these terms differ.

Several institutions, such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or International Monetary Fund (IMF), take factors other than high per capita income into account when classifying countries as "developed" or "advanced economies." The term developed country, or advanced country, is used to categorize countries with developed economies in which the tertiary and quaternary sectors of industry dominate, relatively high standard of living, high Human Development Index (HDI) score and per capita income.

Problems in Developing Countries

Compared to developed western countries, the developing countries are facing major problems of low education level, child labour, unemployment and poverty. However, to quantify these problems in statistical form is very difficult and also not so accurate. Generally these problems are explained through counting number of people facing these problems. The method itself is having a high risk of evaluating exact numbers of illiterate people, poor people and unemployed people.

Generally standard of living in developing countries is close to subsistence level with extremely low savings, and thus a low level of investment. They focus on the development of primary industries (agriculture, timber and mining) is natural due to lack of education and high unemployment. Lack of infrastructure suplly and limited availability of health facilities in developing countries obviously pout them in the range of high rates of births and deaths.

Why Third World countries are much more vulnerable to the outbreak of conflict than the other are?

The third world countries, which we call as economically weaker and socially disturbed countries are generally more exposed to the civil wars. However, many research focused to find whether poverty, hunger, lack of education level are really causing civil wars or there are any other externalities intervening to create conflicts which are turning into civil wars. It is very difficult for a country to escape from the issue of poverty and hunger with rapid urbanisation and uncontrolled birth rates. Countries which faced civil wars were mostly from poor economic situations. This phenomenal situation is called a "conflict trap". Therefore, the regions, which reported the occurrence of civil wars or other conflicts, should not be left to themselves, as this may lead to their self-destruction. This phenomenal situation is called a "poverty trap".

Along with low income groups, there is also a problem of economic growth, which the poorest country does not usually record. The absence of periodic data for economic growth never helps to realise their economic situation and further lacks in development. Like the first cause, here the system works both ways. The outbreak of civil war, cause outflow of capital

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