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	Military conflicts threaten to undermine battle against Rural Poverty by Thalif Deen Inter Press Service   The ongoing battle against rural poverty is in danger of being undermined by a growing number of insurgencies and political upheavals – mostly in Africa.   Currently, nine out of 16 UN peacekeeping missions are in strife-torn Africa, including in Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Sudan, Central African Republic (CAR), Sudan and Cote d’Ivoire.   At the same time, an African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission is standing by in politically-troubled Burundi which is on the brink of a civil war.   Asked if current conflicts are setbacks in fighting rural poverty, Dr Shenggen Fan, Director General of the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), told IPS: “Absolutely.”   “We have seen increased correlation between conflict, poverty and hunger. It is the regions or countries in conflict, (where) poverty and hunger levels are the highest”.   In some of the conflict zones, he pointed out, hunger and poverty have actually increased compared to the global level where they actually declined.   “As we know, most of the hunger and poverty are in rural areas. We must break the vicious circle of conflict and hunger/poverty,” said Dr Fan, who received the 2014 Hunger Hero Award from the World Food Programme (WFP) in recognition of his leadership in fighting hunger worldwide.   Addressing the UN’s Economic and Financial Committee last October, Carla Mucavi of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) emphasized the need for intense agricultural and rural development — since 75 percent of the world’s poor lived in rural areas of developing countries.   Last September, the WFP said it was increasing food aid to hundreds of thousands of hungry people, many severely malnourished, who have fled to Chad, Niger and Cameroon to escape attacks by Boko Haram militants in northeastern Nigeria.   According to the WFP, nearly three quarters of a million people in countries bordering Nigeria are facing a worsening food crisis linked to increased violence by Boko Haram.   Danielle Nierenberg, President, Food Tank: The Food Think Tank, told IPS poverty equals food insecurity in many rural areas of the developing world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa.   When harvests are bad or there isn’t enough food to the last though the hunger season, the rural poor don’t have any safety net, she said.   As a result, malnutrition, stunting, and micronutrient deficiencies impact millions of people living in isolated rural areas.   Unfortunately, when people are hungry and angry—as a result of lack of jobs, lack of rural infrastructure, lack of education, or the impacts of climate change—they become “hangry”, she added, coining a new word.   “This can lead to social unrest like we saw during the Arab Spring or today in Syria. That’s why it’s important for governments to invest in not just rural areas, but also in making rural areas economically and intellectually stimulating places for youth to live and where they see agriculture as an opportunity, not a burden.”   She said investing in the next generation of agricultural leaders—not only farmers, but scientists, extension agents, researchers, and policymakers who care about food agriculture—is not only important for food security, but also for national and international security.   “If we really care about preventing terrorism and social unrest, we need to invest and support rural agriculture and livelihoods”, she declared.   Asked if conflicts are also forcing migration from villages to urban areas — or vice versa (depending on the location of the fighting), Dr Fan told IPS conflict and wars force people to move from their homes to other regions or even other countries.   Increasingly, these refugees live in urban centers or in non-agricultural regions (Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and lately Europe). Most of the refugee camps are close to cities.   “Thus we must pay increasing attention to poverty and hunger in urban areas as people are moving to cities either because of economic reasons or conflict. The climate change will further complicate the challenge”, Dr Fan declared.   Reflecting on the shortage of water and sanitation facilities in poverty-stricken rural communities, Tim Brewer, Policy Analyst at the UK-based WaterAid told IPS the lack of basic public health services such as water and sanitation is a huge and significant problem in rural areas of developing countries.   He said more than 426 million people in low income and lower-middle income countries don’t have access to clean water, and more than 1.35 billion in these countries do not have basic sanitation.   “Rural poverty frequently goes hand-in-hand with the lack of access to safe water,” he pointed out.   For instance, on average, one-third (32.3%) of all Sub-Saharan Africans do not have access to clean drinking water and more than 70% don’t have access to a decent, private toilet.   In rural areas, the numbers are even more dramatic: almost 44% of rural Sub-Saharan Africans don’t have access to clean water, and nearly 77% of rural Sub-Saharan Africans don’t have access to basic sanitation, Brewer said.   “We also see far higher numbers of people in rural areas — 700% more than in urban areas — depending upon surface water, namely ponds, rivers and lakes, which suggests long, dangerous walks for water.”   Rates of open defecation, which carries huge risk of infection transmission, are also much higher in rural areas. This is true in virtually all developing countries, he noted.   The chore of fetching water often falls to women and girls, taking up precious time that could be spent caring for family, earning an income, studying or at leisure.   Illnesses caused by dirty water and poor sanitation mean lost productivity and lost time in school, as well as straining fragile health systems – all further entrenching the cycle of poverty, Brewer said.   “Diarrhoea remains one of the top three causes of child death. Sepsis claims half a million new born babies worldwide each year, and is caused by infections which can often be prevented by good hygiene practices – which require water and sanitation services to be in place.”   He said the number of people with access to clean water worldwide is growing but progress has been uneven, particularly in poorer countries.   Drought, flood and extreme weather shocks exacerbated by climate change are also making lives more difficult; poor communities find it harder to come back from natural disasters, especially if their access to water and sanitation was already fragile.   Conversely, Brewer said, sustainable and robust water and sanitation services help poor communities to be resilient to these shocks, as well as to other changes such as increases in population when people move.   “Access to safe water and basic sanitation, as well as good hygiene practises like handwashing with soap, are the first essential building blocks in development.”   In September, world leaders ratified 17 new Global Goals to eradicate extreme poverty and build a fairer, more sustainable world.   In rural areas particularly, goals to end poverty, malnutrition, preventable diseases and gender inequality depend on achieving universal provision of the human rights to basic water and sanitation, he declared. 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	Small Arms, Big Violations by Daniel Mack International Journal on Human Rights Brazil   Firearms are the main vector of violent death and injury worldwide. The preponderance of small arms in the armed violence “epidemic” – over a half million killed annually – is considerable but not uniform across regions.   The World Health Organization considers over 10 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants an epidemic level of violence – the average global rate has remained beneath that threshold, most recently at 6.2; in over 30 countries (almost all in Europe and Asia) the rate is less than 1.2 Yet, in regions such as the Americas (16.3) and Africa (12.5), rates are well above epidemic levels, constituting an ongoing public health and human rights disaster.   Under a closer lens, the picture becomes downright terrifying. Central America and Southern Africa lead at over 25 homicides per 100,000, with South America, Central Africa and the Caribbean not far behind. In recent years, Honduras and El Salvador have exchanged the morbid title of earth’s most violent country. Within nations, large conurbations (such as San Pedro Sula, Acapulco, Maceió, San Salvador, Tegucigalpa or Caracas) often have homicide rates more than ten-fold the epidemic threshold.   In the Americas, two-thirds of all homicides occur with firearms, and the availability of illegal guns may be driving rising homicide rates in Central America and the Caribbean – the only world sub-regions experiencing increases. Globally, firearms were used in slightly less than half of all violent deaths for the period of 2007 to 2012, for an annual average of almost 200,000.   While armed violence is highly concentrated geographically – the 18 countries with the highest rates account for 4% of the world’s population but 24% of all violent deaths – firearms (mostly handguns) are a major part of the story everywhere. Even in regions where armed violence is a small problem (such as much of Western Europe), guns constitute a significant vector of harm. Wherever armed violence ravishes communities and kills scores of people, in conflict or countries “at peace”, firearms are often protagonists. “Legal intervention killings” (or “death by police”) which in many societies constitute a major form of violation of human rights, are often committed with guns.   In fact, firearms are overwhelmingly involved in violence at large – not only in homicides. Guns are more plentiful and impactful than all other types of conventional weapons (bombs, mines) within the concept of “armed violence”. Including firearm suicides and accidents under the rubric of “armed violence” would further consolidate the disproportional role played particularly by handguns in the broader “epidemic”. Data on violence does not include the massive numbers of gun suicides – for conceptual and methodological reasons – but from the perspective of a threat to the right life, these cannot be ignored; in the US, for example, more people kill themselves with guns than are killed by others.   In the case of non-lethal incidents and psychological effects (fear, threats), guns are also the main tools of injury and intimidation. Though precise numbers are elusive, and psychological effects are often ignored, non-lethal and non-physical harm are a major component of the epidemic. As many as 7 million people around the world over the last decade could be living with firearm injuries in settings outside of armed conflicts. In the US, estimates point to three to six non-lethal victims per fatality.   Injuries, moreover, often mask so-called “slow homicides”, recorded as causa mortis such as infection, but caused by gun violence months or years earlier.   Psychological effects are likewise grim, under-reported and widespread. In the case of São Paulo, although homicides have fallen over 70% in the last decade – a precipitous drop sometimes referred to as the “São Paulo miracle” – polls suggest that the vast majority of people think “violence” has increased – armed robbery being a major culprit. According to a recent victimisation poll, more than half of all Brazilians are “very afraid” of being killed, and almost a third believes they could be murdered within 12 months.   These effects cannot be ignored, as “guns do not need to be fired to be effective. The carrying of a gun often symbolises its use, or substitutes for its use far more effectively than does actual use, provided the willingness of the user to actually fire the weapon has been established.”15 In the psyche of Brazilians, and throughout the Americas, this willingness is firmly established through personal experience or ubiquitous media coverage of violent crime.   Among the simplest technologies developed by humans to harm other humans, guns kill, maim and violate more rights on a daily basis worldwide than much more sophisticated, expensive and attended-to weapons: “about 60% of human rights violations documented by Amnesty International have involved the use of small arms and light weapons.”   And even if an epidemic of clichés also surrounds small arms – the most famous (“the real weapons of mass destruction”), was penned by Kofi Annan – to the chagrin of human security advocates the international community has yet to wage a proportional response to their harm..   * Access the full essay via the link below.   http://sur.conectas.org/en/issue-22/small-arms-big-violations/ http://osf.to/2e40xQZ http://sur.conectas.org/en/ http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/home.html
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