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From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

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4 RISK AND VULNERABILITY VIOLENCE AND CONFLICTThe success of innovative approaches like the We Can campaignsuggests that the state alone cannot solve the attitudes and beliefs sideof the development equation. Activism can be a potent force forchanging community social institutions that perpetuate violenceagainst women.WARBeyond such ‘social violence’ lies another, more cataclysmic shock –war. The modern era is bloody on an unprecedented scale. Nearlythree times as many people (110 million) were killed in conflict in thetwentieth century as in the previous four centuries combined. 131 Inthis century there is now a ‘rump’of more than 30 protracted conflicts,most of them civil wars, which have evaded attempts at resolution. 132They grind on alongside this decade’s new conflicts in Iraq, Darfur,and elsewhere. In addition, inter-communal violence, from Gujarat inIndia <strong>to</strong> Karamoja in Uganda, takes many lives. In 2002 and 2003‘one-sided violence’, including the deliberate slaughter of civilians,was as common as armed conflict between two or more armedgroups. 133 Political violence <strong>to</strong>day is concentrated in developingcountries where violence is as deeply entrenched as poverty andinequality.Conflict has driven some 33 million people from their homes,12 million of them refugees and asylum seekers, the rest internallydisplaced. 134 This represents a four-fold increase since the early 1970s.Flight disrupts lives for generations, but the experience variesenormously. Some people, as in Lebanon in August 2006, flee <strong>to</strong>neighbouring <strong>to</strong>wns or villages for a period of weeks. Others, as innorthern Sri Lanka, have fled and returned many times over thecourse of 20 years. Still others, such as Somalis in Kenya, have beenwarehoused in refugee camps for up <strong>to</strong> 15 years.The end of the Cold War helped bring down the curtain on anumber of wars and allowed major returns of refugees in Angola,Mozambique, Cambodia, Central America, and Afghanistan. At thesame time, new conflicts erupted in the former Soviet republics, theBalkans, the Middle East, West Africa, the Democratic Republic of theCongo, across the Great Lakes region, and in the Horn of Africa.277

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