Unit 3 Study guide (Chapter 4 + 5) Flashcards
(23 cards)
According to Seear, war is defined as “armed conflict that causes 1,000 or more battle deaths per year)” (p. 60). Since the mid-1990s, the number of wars (overall) in the world has:
a. Steadily increased
b. Steadily decreased
c. Stayed about the same
b. Steadily decreased
Between 1946 and 2008 which type of war saw the greatest decline in incidence?
a. Foreign interventions
b. Internal conflicts
c. Conflicts between countries
d. Colonial conflicts
d. Colonial conflicts
What is the most common form of war in present day 2014?
Non-State civil war
(war between revel groups within a country
According to Seear, what are five principal predisposing factors of civil war?
- Chronic poverty and disgruntled young men
- Endemic violence:
- Bad governance:
- Lootable resources
- Bad neighbourhood
- Chronic poverty and disgruntled young men:
- Poverty reduces access to education and usually worsens the distribution of income within a country… there is strong association b/w conflict and poor access to education, particularly for males.
- Uneducated, unemployed men, dissatisfied with a life of poverty and frustrated by the obvious inequalities w/i their country, are an easy target for leaders able to manipulate and exaggerate ethnic or religious differences to the point of fighting . Evidence would suggest that their leaders are more often motivated by power or the possibility of loot.
- Endemic violence:
• Concept of countries trapped in an endless cycle of violence and poverty is a powerful image
• Evidence suggests that the five-year relapse rate is increasing with time.
• As some countries manage to climb out of this destructive cycle, it leaves behind a smaller hard core of fragile states that increasingly diverge from the rest of the world’s slowly growing prosperity.
• In a country of poor governance and weak policing, it takes only a relatively small number of armed young men to perpetuate a state of violence
• Unfortunately, in such countries, it doesn’t cost much to arm and feed a thousand men, particularly if oil or diamonds are the source of funding
• Evidence would suggest that it isn’t difficult to find suitable volunteers
Unless such fragile, war-torn states are giving substantial economic and social assistance, they are unlikely to emerge from the chaos using their own resources
- Bad governance:
- The effects of bad governance are like those of poverty—they are frequently associated with conflict, but not an easily predictable manner.
- BUT many countries have bad governance without civil war. Example: Haiti, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Burma- Their governments are so bad that if they simply did nothing, it would be an improvement
- Citizens expect their governments to organize the country in a safe, prosperous manner and if this unwritten contract is broken, then authority is lost and a degree of anarchy (state of disorder without authority) results. A situation that isn’t helped by the usual associated weakness of policing and peacekeeping alibies of the state.
- One particular element of government authority that is a source of Trouble is the management of valuable resources.
- In a typical fragile state, the population hasn’t a clue where the money from minerals or oil resources finally go—they only know that it doesn’t seem to go to them.
- Lootable resources
- Valuable resources are associated with so many potential problems, they are often referred to as a “resource curse”
- The curse refers to the observation that resource-rich countries frequently perform far below their expected economic level
- The presence of valuable reserves is also associated with an increased risk of internal conflict
- Diamonds and oil are particularly closely related with violence
- As usual, several mechanisms are proposed, including weakening of the economy through artificial strengthening of the currency so that exports fall
- A source of easily convertible loot for rebel groups, and a trigger for violence following boom and bust shocks to the local economy, which are common in single-resource—based economies
- There have been recent moves to improve the level of management of mineral resources
- Bad neighbourhood
- In 1776, Adam smith pointed out that the landlocked area of central Asia and Africa were the poorest parts of the world.
- This situation hasn’t changed and is still one that affects all parts of the globe. Ex. Bhutan, Laos, Bolivia, and Zambia
- The relationship isn’t straight forward since there are countries such as Botswana and Switzerland that manage to be prosperous and peaceful despite being far from international ports.
- The difference is due to the type of neighbourhood.
- If surrounding countries are peaceful, they are customers for products, not simply a road to the outside world
- Whether the roads and railways are repaired, whether trucks can pass without being looted, and whether exports can be sold locally all depends on the peace and stability of the surrounding states.
- Unless the whole region can be helped, there is little chance for one small country in the middle
Which region of the world shows the greatest number of non-state conflicts by region?
Sub-Saharan Africa
(Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya.
An NGO (Non- Government Agency) in Canada wants to support efforts to end a civil war in a low-income country. What can be possibly gained by investing aid dollars in the country’s economic development?
The risk of conflict increases as poverty worsens. The peak effect of aid appears to be roughly five years after the ceasefire Long investments
• External agencies should accept that investment in post-conflict countries requires a graded input, a long investment period (at least 7 years) and a large cumulative total of cash.
• Compared to the total cost of collapse back into civil war, the investment is highly cost-effective
Based upon the situation above in question 6, in order to promote economic growth, at what rate should the aid investment by the Canadian NGO be invested and why?
a. Quickly – all at once
b. Slowly – over time
Slowly – over time
• (Aid can have significant benefits on economic growth, but it must be phased in slowly as local capacity to absorb aid improves
• Clearly technical assistance for institutional capacity building is also an essential during this early period
They lost skills over time it will take time to re learned them
1) Economic Poverty:
- Caused by low productivity and a poor resource base,
- Reflected in low income, poor nutrition, and inevitably, poor health
- Examples: rural smallholders dependent on adequate rainfall
- The children have nothing to inherit and few opportunities, so they are caught in an unending cycle of poverty
2) Instant and temporary poverty:
- Sudden hazards such as earthquakes, drought, and war can cause instant poverty in an area. Some of these may be relatively short-lived.
- Conditions may improve following a permanent ceasefire (temporary suspension of fighting ) or improved rains
- Migration and population pressures may overwhelm an area that was previously reasonably prosperous, forming an overcrowding poverty
3) New poor:
• Imposed national austerity measures or high inflation may precipitate poverty in a significant percentage of a country by eroding income and savings.
4) Hidden Poverty:
• Examples: includes retirees living on small pensions who might have adequate shelter and food, but who lack sufficient extra income to heat their houses or seek health care.
5) Absolute Poverty:
- Such people are deprived of ALL elements necessary to make an adequately healthy life
- They lack access to safe water, shelter, or security and are more likely to remain in that condition despite improvements in society brought on by better market conditions
The Three Distinct Stages of Third World Debt Development
The Three Distinct Stages of Third World Debt Development
1. Colonial Legacy: First cause of Debt- the Arbitrary (based on random choice or personal whim) imposition of debt onto newly independent countries by their previous colonial master [14% interest rate]
2. Indiscriminant Lending: lending of vast money to poorly prepared dictatorships, money that was subsequently wasted and pillaged by corrupt governments with little or no benefit for their people.
• Occurred mainly during the decade of 1970s,
• A rapid increase in oil prices produced huge profits for countries in the Middle East
• Europe was in recession because of the effects of high energy cost, so the banks looked to the developing world for their customers
• The World Bank actually persuaded themselves they were doing a useful service. Borrowing cheap money seemed, at least on the surface, to be a good way of generating much needed development BUT it was a Disaster
• Sometimes money was lent simply out of greed
• Loan salesmen competed with each other to see who could give the largest loans to the biggest tyrants (a cruel and oppressive ruler.)
• The loans salesmen approach was callous (cruel) They were indifferent to the purposes that these loans were put; they were helping communist regimes, tyrannical regimes
• Money was stolen for personal use, wasted on the military or grandiose projects where failure was inevitable
• 20% of borrowed money was spent on arms that allowed dictators to terrorize and murder their own people
• Term “Odious debt” money that was loaned to developing countries during the 1970sSince the loan was of benefit only to the dictatorial regime, there is no reason that it should be paid off by subsequent governments: “this debt is not an obligation for the nation; it is a regime’s debt, personal debt of the power that incurred it, consequently it falls with the fall of this power.
3. Financial Collapse: Secondary to rising interest rates and falling commodity prices (a raw material or primary agricultural product that can be bought and sold, such as copper or coffee)
• The rising interest rate
increase in the size of the debt repayments.
• (increase in oil prices originally caused the decade of easy loans
triggered a global recession with a sharp drop in commodity prices that supported much of the exports of developing countries)
Meant that developing countries found themselves having to pay more with DIMINISHING revenues
• It was no longer felt necessary to support unjust tyrants against the threat of a communist ‘menace”
consequently, supplies of easy loans to a range dried up
• The economies of developing countries were often shaped by mineral or agriculturaldidn’t have the flexibility to respond to the new economic demands Failure of debt repayment become inevitable
Hopefully we are now entering a fourth stage of Debt Forgiveness
3 Types of global Debt
Multilateral
Bilateral
Private
Multilateral Debt
- Debt owed to large multilateral banks such as the IMF, The World Bank, inter-American Development Bank and the African Development Bank.
- These institutions represents the only source of credit for the poorest countries (so they hold much of the debt of the poorest countries)
- 26 Countries have met their obligations and have received substantial debt cancellation
Bilateral Debt
- Debts resulting from bilateral country-to-country loans
- They are frequently given to support trade deals through export credit agencies.
- The need for one agency to scrutinize and maintain the standards of export deals has been taken over by the European network on debt and development
- To support this work, Eurodad has developed a Charter on Responsible Financing which European countries are expected to respect when making deals Eurodad also pressured governments not to inflate their development assistance claims by including cancelled commercial debts
Private Debt
- Debts held by private banks and bondholders
- This Form of Debt is common in Middle-income countries (that still have access to private credit sources)
- Some creditors have been aggressive in their pursuit of repayment.
- In some cases the debts have been sold at a discount to funds prepared to take to take the trouble to demand repayment at full value from the debtor –Called Vulture funds
- European countries have now Agreed not to sell their debts to funds in an attempt to stop the practice
- Resolution… Found through the London Club which represents the interests of major commercial lenders
(Please note that this article is not a Unit #3 “required reading”. However, the in-class lecture and discussion content provided in regard to the Mabaya and Ray (2014) study publication is testable on the mid-term and final exam. The following questions will all be addressed in the class lecture and will provide you with a guide to note-taking.
Research study design: Interpretative phenomenological
• This is an appropriate research design because the aim of the study was to uncover and describe the internal meaning structure, the lived experience, the meaning of health and health-seeking behaviours, and their life world. (have experienced collective violence in their home country)
- What was the sample size of the study discussed? What were the known characteristics of the research study participants?
Sample Size: 3 Females and 3 Males
Characteristics of the participants
• Between ages of 25-70
• Lived in Canada for at least 3 years
• Have experienced collective violence
• First-hand experience with war or genocide in their midteens or adulthood
• The age of 15 was selected as the minimal acceptable age, since traumatic events are often not well remembered in childhood - What method was used to accomplish data analysis?
Method: Semi-structured interviews (face-to-face), using open-ended questions - Why were the study findings “not generalizable”?
• Small sample only taken from 2 regions of the world
• — The nature of qualitative research does not allow for generalizations of the research findings to the broader refugee population - What was meant by participant Jane’s comment that “Trauma is like a cancerous cell”?
Janes: “Trauma is like a cancerous cell”
• Potential to metastasize to the rest of the body and have long-lasting ill-health effects if not identified and dealt with in time…starts in one place and spreads all over - How did the refugee study participants describe their experiences of health and health seeking activities post-migration to Canada from their country of origin?
Health as freedom from constant suffering of collective violence, still face challenges but they are stronger and feel empowered
Health as living with the irreversible wound of trauma: all women in the study say they continue to suffer from trauma
• Among men, none mentioned that they are currently dealing with trauma
Help-seeking options as imperfect but fair
• Receiving universal health care coverage is a privilege they did not have in their home countries
• System fairness makes them feel valued as received human beings
Francophone- Received inadequate interpretations which increased level of stress and not seeking help
Must establish trust in order to open themselves eye and seek help - According to the authors, what general changes need to take place in the Canadian health care system to better address the needs of refugees in Canada who have arrived from war-torn countries?
Changes that need to take place:
• The aware of the need of this population
• Ensure that the socio-cultural determinants of health are effectively addressed
• Implement interpretation services
• Provide support for comprehensive interdisciplinary care and continuity of care
• Create new-avenues for intersectoral care and community engagement (ensure patients can obtain employment and economic stability)
