Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

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Urban crime and violence
Table 3.4
Examples of major
terrorist incidents since
1997
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents
■ Recent trends in the incidence of urban
terrorism
Table 3.4 shows major terrorist incidents that have taken
place since 1997, which include: the attack on the World
Trade Center in New York, US, on 11 September 2001; the
bombing of holidaymakers in Bali, Indonesia; the coordinated
bombings in Madrid in March 2004; the London bombings
of July 2005; and the bombing of commuter trains in
Mumbai in July 2006. Although these acts of terrorism are
local events, they have had international repercussions that
have ricocheted across the world. Therefore they tend to
receive greater media and international coverage than, for
example, riots or disturbances in an urban slum that might
claim more lives. Although not indicated in the table, most
terrorist-related attacks and subsequent loss of human lives
that have occurred in 2007 are linked to the situation in
Iraq, where deaths from car bombing have remarkably
increased. It is pertinent to note that a greater proportion of
recent terrorist attacks have taken place in developing
countries (see Table 3.4). If the situation in Israel is left out,
the lowest level of terrorist attacks occurs in developed
countries. 117 Colombia, more than any other country,
experienced a total of 191 terrorist attacks in 2001 alone. 118
Although mass transit systems, particularly commuter
trains, are frequently targeted, recent international research
that compares several modes of travel has shown that mass
transit systems are extremely safe and that other travel
modes, such as the automobile, represent a far greater risk
Date Incident Number of Number of
people killed people injured
17 November 1997 Gunmen attack tourists in Luxor, Egypt 62 24
7 August 1998 US embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, 225 > 4000
Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya
18 October 1998 Blowing up of the Ocensa pipeline near 84 100
Machuca in Antioquia, Colombia
11 September 2001 A series of hijacked airliner crashes into the 3500
World Trade Center in New York City and
The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, USA
9 May 2002 Bomb explosion in Kaspiisk in Dagestan,
Russia during Victory Day festivities 42 130
12 October 2002 Bombing of holidaymakers Bali, Indonesia 202
23–27 October 2002 Moscow theatre hostage crisis, Russia 160
27 December 2002 Truck bombing of the Chechen parliament 83
in Grozny
7 February 2003 El Nogal Club bombing in Bogotá, Colombia 36 150
12 May 2003 A truck bomb attack carried out on a 59
government building in the Chechen town
of Znamenskoye
25 August 2003 South Mumbai bombings: Gateway of India 48 150
and Zaveri Bazaar
6 February 2004 Bombing of Moscow Metro, Russia 41
27 February 2004 Bombing of Superferry 14 in the Philippines 116
11 March 2004 Coordinated bombing of commuter trains in 191 1500
Madrid, Spain
24 August 2004 Terrorist attack on two domestic Russian 90
aircraft in Moscow, Russia
7 July 2005 London bombings: Bombs explode on three 56 700
underground trains and on one double-decker bus
23 July 2005 Bombing of tourist sites in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt 88 > 100
29 October 2005 Multiple bomb blasts in markets in Delhi, India 61 200
9 November 2005 Three explosions at hotels in Amman, Jordan 60 120
11 July 2006 A series of explosions rock commuter trains in 209 714
Mumbai, India
to society than does transit terrorism. 119 For example, while
not intending to minimize the horror of the events, this
study notes that the 56 deaths resulting from the 7 July
2005 London bombings were equivalent to about six days of
normal British traffic fatalities and that the 9/11 attacks
killed about as many as die in a typical month of US traffic
accidents.
In relation to ‘everyday violence’ or common crime,
the incidence of terrorist attacks is significantly small.
Consequently, the risks of terrorism cannot be as easily
calculated, since such small numbers of attacks defy probability
analysis when compared to huge numbers of common
crimes. For example, the US National Counterterrorism
Center reported 13 terrorist incidents in the United States
between February 2004 and May 2005 and, for approximately
the same period, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
identified 10.32 million property crimes and over 1.36
million violent crimes. 120 Nonetheless, the impacts of terrorism
on cities have been enormous in recent years.
FACTORS UNDERLYING
CRIME AND VIOLENCE
This section discusses some of the factors associated with
criminal and violent activities. Crime and violence are lifechanging
events that are often facilitated by the convergence
of several risk factors. These include the immediate availability
of guns, drugs and alcohol. The last two serve as triggers,
rather than the causes of violence. These facilitators play off
individual and relationship characteristics, such as personality
traits, histories of abuse and neglect, dysfunctional family
settings, age and gender, and risky lifestyles. At broad
national and societal (macro) levels, crime and violence are
linked to a range of long-term underlying economic, social,
cultural and political circumstances that produce opportunities
and incentives for criminal behaviour and violent acts, as
well as the situations that frame victimization. Some of these
factors are described in the following sub-sections.
Social and cultural factors
<strong>Global</strong>ly, informal forces embedded in social and cultural
values are arguably the most powerful factors acting to
encourage or discourage crime and violence. In some
societies, crime and violence are common components of
daily life and are accepted social and cultural norms, or (in
the case of ‘structural violence’) are built into, or encouraged
by, law. For example, in Kabul, Karachi and Managua,
violence is so interwoven into the fabric of daily life that it
has become ‘routinized’, or normalized, as ‘terror as usual’
for many slum dwellers. 121 Structural violence helps to legitimize
other forms of ethnic- and gender-based domestic
physical and sexual assault that have immediate impacts on
individuals, and which may result in re-victimization. For
instance, between 70 and 90 per cent of Pakistani women
suffer from domestic violence incidents, many of which have
resulted in other victimizations such as rape and murder. 122