Social And Economic Policies To Prevent Complex Humanitarian Emergencies

Economic Development, Inequality and War shows how economic decline, income inequality, pervasive rent seeking by ruling elites, political authoritarianism, military centrality and competition for mineral exports contribute to war and humanitarian emergencies. Economic regress and political decay bring about relative deprivation, perception by social groups of injustice arising from a growing discrepancy between what they expect and get. Nafziger and Auvinen indicate that both economic greed and social grievances drive contemporary civil wars. Finally, the authors also identify policies for preventing humanitarian emergencies.

Civil wars, genocides, natural disasters and other emergencies multiplied in the 1990s, and not just in the South, but in the Balkans and the former Soviet bloc. This book examines how to respond to the fundamental difficulties thrown up by these humanitarian crises. What kind of aid, in particular, should be brought in when the situation on the ground mixes up emergency relief with the longer-term process of development? The book includes many different voices and embodies an open-ended debate about the whole diverse process of international aid. The experiences and lessons it contains are relevant to all those playing a part in, or wishing to understand, the practice and dilemmas of humanitarian aid in the 1990s.

A comprehensive, best practices resource for public health and healthcare practitioners and students interested in humanitarian emergencies.

Since the end of the cold war, civil wars and state violence have escalated, resulting in thousands of deaths. This book provides a toolbox for donors, international agencies and developing countries to prevent humanitarian emergencies. The emphasis is on long-term rather than mediation or reconstruction after the conflict ensues.

Analysing the abusive systems that surround and produce humanitarian disasters, this text gives particular attention to the economic, political and psychological functions of civil conflicts and humanitarian disasters.

Since the end of the cold war, the number of civil wars in developing countries has escalated to the point where they are the most significant source of human suffering in the world today. Although there are many political analyses of these emergencies, this two-volume work is the first comprehensive study of the economic, social, and political roots of humanitarian emergencies, identifying early measures to prevent such disasters. Nafziger, Stewart, and V--auml--;yrynen draw on a wide range of specialists on the political economy of war and on major conflicts to show the causes of conflict. The first volume provides a general overview of the nature and causes of the emergencies, including economic, political, and environmental factors. The second volume provides detailed case studies of thirteen conflicts (including Rwanda, Burundi, the Congo, Afghanistan, and the Caucasus) that originated in the weakness of the state or where economic factors predominate. The volumes emphasize the significance of protracted economic stagnation and decline, high and increasing inequality, government exclusion of distinct social groups, state failure and predatory rule. They debunk beliefs recurrent in the literature that emergencies are the result of deteriorating environmental conditions, structural adjustment, and deep-seated ethnic animosity. By analysing the causes and prevention of war and humanitarian emergencies in developing countries, this work outlines a less costly alternative to the present strategy of the world community of spending millions of dollars annually to provide mediation, relief, and rehabilitation after the conflict occurs.