War Hunger And Displacement

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.

Includes statistics.

Since the end of the Cold War, civil wars in developing countries have escalated to become the most significant source of human suffering in the world today. This is an overview of the nature and causes of civil wars

The authors explore ways in which warfare creates hunger. The cases of Angola, Sudan, Tigray, Eritrea, Mozambique and Somalia illuminate the nature of complex emergencies in situations of war. Other chapters focus on the reforms required of the UN's machinery, reassess the role of relief in time of war, and ask how the international community should respond to the new circumstances of post-Cold War international interventions.

Human displacement has always been a consequence of war, written into the myths and histories of centuries of warfare. However, the global conflicts of the twentieth century brought displacement to civilizations on an unprecedented scale, as the two World Wars shifted participants around the globe. Although driven by political disputes between European powers, the consequences of Empire ensured that Europe could not contain them. Soldiers traversed continents, and civilians often followed them, or found themselves living in territories ruled by unexpected invaders. Both wars saw fighting in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Far East, and few nations remained neutral. Both wars saw the mass upheaval of civilian populations as a consequence of the fighting. Displacements were geographical, cultural, and psychological; they were based on nationality, sex/gender or age. They produced an astonishing range of human experience, recorded by the participants in different ways. This book brings together a collection of inter-disciplinary works by scholars who are currently producing some of the most innovative and influential work on the subject of displacement in war, in order to share their knowledge and interpretations of historical and literary sources. The collection unites historians and literary scholars in addressing the issues of war and displacement from multiple angles. Contributors draw on a wealth of primary source materials and resources including archives from across the world, military records, medical records, films, memoirs, diaries and letters, both published and private, and fictional interpretations of experience.