Structural Violence and the Bottom Billion

The collapse of the Soviet Union meant that free-market capitalism would dominate the world economy. US scholars claimed the system would create mass amounts of wealth and significantly reduce poverty. Looking back on the past twenty years in terms of worldwide averages we can see that neoliberal economics has done precisely what it claimed it would. There are now over 1,200 billionaires in the world (up from 358 billionaires in 1995) and the percentage of people living in poverty has decreased worldwide in both relative and absolute numbers. But these realities hide other, more disturbing, outcomes of this economic system behind a cloak of (over)simplification. For example, the economic rise of India and China has brought most of their citizens out of poverty, thus significantly offsetting the fact that in the year 2000 a billion people were poorer than they were in 1970 and that the median age of death in Sub-Saharan Africa is less than five years (no, this is not a typo).

These "hidden" people suffer from what Dr. Paul Farmer – Professor at Harvard University and founder of Partners in Health – calls "structural violence": that the structure of the neoliberal economic system denies elementary rights to many people through tyrannical governments, lack of health care, neglect of public facilities, lack of education, oppression, and exploitation. Rights violations are no accident. According to Farmer, "rights violations are, rather, deeper pathologies of power and are linked intimately to the social conditions that so often determine who will suffer abuse and who will be shielded from harm."

It’s not only Africa. Haiti, Harlem, much of the former Soviet bloc, Bolivia, Laos, Cambodia, Yemen, Burma, North Korea, and indigenous groups everywhere collectively suffer violent conditions. Economist Paul Collier – former director of the research department at the World Bank – has identified a total of fifty eight countries that fall into the “bottom billion” category: those who are “falling behind and falling apart.” Collier believes we need to refocus our view of poverty. Many of the poor countries of the 1970’s are actually middle-income countries today, yet the International Monetary Fund has offices in every middle income country and virtually no offices in the fifty-eight countries of the bottom billion.  

Why are these countries “falling behind and falling apart” while others are reducing poverty at speeds never before seen? Collier believes there are four characteristics unique to the countries of the bottom billion that make it nearly impossible to climb out of poverty: the conflict trap (i.e. being trapped in a civil war), the natural resource trap (i.e. becoming a one-dimensional economy), the trap of being land-locked with bad neighbors (i.e. being unable to access ports for trade), and the trap of bad governance in a small country (i.e. government leaders stealing aid money or not building infrastructure). All countries of the bottom billion have at least one of these afflictions and most suffer more than one.

Following the horrors of Nazi extermination camps in the Second World War the world demanded a set of rules to ensure such catastrophes would never again be written in the pages of history. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 was the result. However great its intentions, the events in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda certainly show that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been unsuccessful in preventing grotesque human rights violations. Dr. Farmer would say that no state provides sufficient rights to all its citizens. While achieving this might be unrealistic it should be our goal and we can certainly do better than presently.  

In the US we have done a good job achieving civil and political rights. But what about other rights? What about other countries? Dr. Farmer says, "civil rights cannot really be defended if social and economic rights are not... the hesitation of many in the human rights community to cross the line from rights activism of pure principals to one involving transfers of money, food, and medicine betrays a failure... to address the urgent needs of the people were are trying to defend."

Inequality – political and economic – is a threat to democratic government and economic growth. Institutions (governmental, economic, and social) in highly unequal societies tend to be inefficient compared to their more egalitarian cousins. A cycle of inequality emerges as these societies ignore social obligations (such as education) and instead focus on opening up their economies to a world dominated by competitive capitalism. In this world the rule is: if you can’t compete you don’t get to play the game. More concerning, extreme inequality creates political instability and thus undermines democracy. Fed up and with nothing to lose, these marginalized groups frequently resort to violence, coups, and other undemocratic practices. This instability scares off would-be investors and inhibits the gradual process on which economic growth depends.

The day after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s murder – and two months before his own murder – Robert “Bobby” Kennedy gave one of the greatest speeches of all time. Titled On the Mindless Menace of Violence, Kennedy’s words ring as true today as they did over forty years ago: 

… [W]e seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire… Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.  

… [T]here is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter. This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.  

…We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others… But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can. 

So how to fix this flawed system? Dr. Farmer argues for an overhaul. We need to "redistribute some of the world’s vast wealth" to reduce inequality, provide human rights to all and provide a preferential option for the poor. Collier says we need to overhaul our system of aid, use military interventions appropriately, develop effective laws and charters, and provide trade benefits to those in need. He calls on conservatives and liberals of the world to work together.

The neglect of those in poverty in this era of affluence is our world’s greatest regret. To overcome it is our greatest challenge.