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Page added on September 14, 2015
A less fragile future
The good news is that majority of the world’s population is becoming safer, healthier and richer.
The bad news is that for those unlucky enough to live in the most fragile of environments, sickness, poverty and insecurity persist. According to the World Development Report on Conflict, the quarter of the world’s population living in fragile and conflict-affected situations are twice as likely to be undernourished and to see their children die before age 5 when compared to people in other developing countries. What’s more, poverty rates are 21 percent higher in countries that have recently experienced an episode of major violence. Even within countries we see huge regional disparities in economic growth and quality of life due to insecurity.
In fragile countries like Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia and Yemen addressing conflict and security is critical to stopping the cycle of violence, weak governance and extreme poverty. A recent Mercy Corps study found that if we significantly reduced violence in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, the average household would on average experience a 137 percent increase in income.
Peace — as in, the absence of chronic conflict in one’s normal life — is a key contributor to broader wellbeing. Any effort to improve economic or health outcomes that doesn’t address conflict will not be reaching its greatest impact. Mercy Corps’ experience in the world’s toughest places provides some insight into how we can do this.
For transformational change at scale, enhanced security policies are essential
Northern Uganda was afflicted with years of debilitating interethnic violence that undermined both social and economic progress. Our recent research in Karamoja found that the Moruitit Resolution, a policy instituted by the Ugandan government to deter cattle raiding, was a significant factor in improving people’s security and freedom of movement.
Moreover, as a result of this improved security, we saw significant decreases in hunger among the local population. The more we can influence local and national governments to institute policies that improve security, the more progress we can make in breaking the cycle of conflict and extreme poverty.
Invest in conflict management during humanitarian responses
We are currently seeing an unprecedented number of complex humanitarian crises, most of which are the result of conflict. Given porous borders and increased displacement, there is considerable risk that many crises may spill over into neighboring countries, exacerbating the pressures on an already stretched humanitarian system.
Syria is a case in point, with the spread of Islamic State group into Iraq, and fears the same will occur in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. To address this head on, we need to tackle conflict issues in these crises earlier.
For example, in Iraq in 2014 mediators affiliated with the Iraqi Center for Negotiation Skills and Conflict Management negotiated an agreement with the Provincial Councils of Najaf and Karbala to allow settlement of displaced people and improve humanitarian access. Local cease-fires negotiated for humanitarian purposes can simultaneously meet the goals of reducing conflict intensity and building trust between factions.
Regrettably, many donors begin to scale down conflict management programming when the crisis hits. We need to advocate for maintaining or increasing investment in these areas to stop the violence and reduce the risk of spillover.
Strengthen good governance. If we look at most of today’s complex crises, poor or weak governance is often the trigger. The Arab Spring was not the result of youth unemployment per se, but the fact that governments were not addressing youth grievances, and in many cases were exacerbating it.
This summer’s protests in Lebanon and Iraq are reminders of that. As Mercy Corps found in Afghanistan, Colombia and Somalia, it was corruption and injustice that pushed young people to engage in violence, not lack of jobs. To help move these countries beyond fragility, we need to address the root causes of violence related to governance — improving accountability, inclusiveness, transparency and basic services at the local, national and regional level.
As humanitarian actors think about how to make our greatest contribution in the future, we need to focus primarily on the most fragile places, as that’s where suffering is concentrated. While there are no simple solutions and fast fixes, ending the cycle of violence — coupled with improved governance and economic opportunity — is a critical component of lasting, positive change for the people who need it most.
32 Comments on "A less fragile future"
onlooker on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 8:09 am
“The good news is that majority of the world’s population is becoming safer, healthier and richer.”. This article is mostly hogwash. It focuses on good governance and security. It does not mention that in fact in many cases the government is the source of conflict and not just by not addressing social concerns but by systematic attacking of the opposition in a particular country The continent of Africa offers a case example. The article is right governments do not solve problems but make them worse. Yet the article does not mention the systemic and widespread disenfranchisement of millions and billions due to Neo-liberal capitalist prerogatives. Again this first paragraph is deceptive, most are not becoming richer nor healthier, whats more drug crime and violence have become almost ubiquitous as has a general foreboding of the potential of wider wars
Rodster on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 8:11 am
“The good news is that majority of the world’s population is becoming safer, healthier and richer.”
I stopped reading right there, absolutely laughable. I suppose whoever wrote this hasn’t heard or read about ISIS, the Evil Empire, the upper .01%, the American middle class which has been destroyed, the TBTF Banks, the Global Depression since 2008.
Makati1 on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 8:22 am
Another bullshit article of no importance. More propaganda.
Devex: Go to it and see for yourself.
https://about.devex.com/
“One thousand funding agencies, companies and NGOs.”
onlooker on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 8:37 am
Thanks guys for weighing in. Lets see if any cornies bite haha.
onlooker on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 8:38 am
Also laughable how the article makes no mentions of forced migration, displacement and refugees. Just garbage it terms of the real truth.
americandream on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 8:52 am
Actually the article is correct. There is an extension of the middle class way of life to the non white world.
Of course, reactionary fores in the West are seething as they have had to take a pay cut to match the better efficiency elsewhere.
Thats the paradox of capitalism…it is unrelentingly levelling for the workers of the world. And it will cause the ethnic divide in the world to evaporate with demographics changes. Hence the sudden euphoria over Trump who alas is toothless.
On the downside of course is the fact that we still get fried unless we change our ways.
ghung on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 9:18 am
AD said; “There is an extension of the middle class way of life to the non white world.”
….and an extension of middle class consumption. That makes us less fragile how? Ultimately, overshoot is the only human construct that that matters much. Everything else will be subject to that. Indeed, the expectations and entitlements born of rising standards-of-living will ultimately make every aspect of society less viable. Insanity does that.
onlooker on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 9:47 am
Great point Ghung. The growth of China and India was the final nail in the coffin me thinks.
Davy on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 10:05 am
Onlooker you thinks like me thinks. Why would cultures so old and deep as China and India follow the failed western ways. Because humans are lazy and all want to live like kings. The western system offered all us meer hairless apes a physical nirvana none of us could refuse. We ate the pill that lead to bottleneck instead of sustainability.
BC on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 10:44 am
The Rockefeller-Rothschild banking syndicate long ago envisaged what was referred to as “The Plan” for the “Transatlantic Federation”, the objective of which was phasing out of sovereign states to be replaced by world govt’ and “The Great Leveling”, including most of the policies that have led to the situation today, including the EU, trade deals, “globalization”, financialization, feminization, militarization, a record low for labor share, fiscal austerity from indebtedness, and the Neo-con strategy in the Middle East, Central Asia, and hereafter Africa and the Pacific.
“The Plan” has worked virtually flawlessly so far to date. The next global deflationary recession and financial crisis will be the necessary crisis and thus sufficient opportunity for the Anglo-American, German, Dutch, Swiss, and Milanese Power Elite to further consolidate their financial, economic, and political power.
War with China and putting The Great Red Dragon back in its cage in the Middle Kingdom is an eventual imperial project for fun and profit.
Plantagenet on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 10:56 am
I’m just back from my India trip, and I’m happy to answer Dave’s question about why countries like India are following western ways.
Its all about poverty. Most Indians live lives of abject poverty, with poor housing, not enough food, and no hope of ever escaping the caste they were born into. The promise of western education is that talented children can escape the poverty of their parent’s lives, and attain something like “middle class” affluence, which in India must seem to the poor to be equivalent to living like a Maharajah in Jaipur.
Cheers!
Rodster on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 11:26 am
It’s not so much China and India following the Western Way. It’s pretty much all of Asia and every emerging market. That’s why the Chinese “banking, financial and economic systems” are based on the West and are doomed to fail. Who taught the Chinese to print endless amounts of Monopoly money? Who taught the Chinese to build ghost cities, ghost factories, bridges, roads and trains to nowhere? Who taught the Chinese to build a bigger Shadow Banking system aka “Loan Sharks” than anyone else? The West !!!
That’s why the BRICS, it’s Banking system and the AIIB are all frauds and will fail alongside the West because it’s all based on the Western systems.
apneaman on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 11:42 am
planty, the Holiday Inn – Tour Bus cultural anthropologist. Thanks for your two week drive by ethnography on India’s highly varied billion plus inhabitants.
Plantagenet on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 1:07 pm
Hi Apeman
Again, Its easy to tell you’ve never travelled.
While you might find a Holiday Inn in Delhi, most of the rest of India doesn’t have the kind of accommodation you seek.
And on my trips, I don’t go by tour bus. In India I travelled mostly by train, including one 22 hour marathon on the “post train” between Amritsar and Varanasai.
CHEERS!
Dredd on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 1:13 pm
“The good news is that majority of the world’s population is becoming safer, healthier and richer.”
Dear The Donald,
Duck !
Because you are wrong (The 1% May Face The Wrath of Sea Level Rise First).
apneaman on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 1:24 pm
I have traveled extensively planty, that’s why I went into a trade where you only work 6-8 months a year. I just don’t feel the need to make an all encompassing and consistent effort to tell everyone every trip I have taken or purchase I make or what’s in my portfolio so I can gain status points. It’s quite telling how powerful it is that apes still fell the need to do it even when on the anonymous internet. Apes insecurities – it’s another reason why we can’t get enough goodies.
planty I bought a spaceship last week and took a vacation to the ISS, bought 220 shares of X and sold 130 shares of Z ate a 12 fabulous restaurants and went and saw CATS on Broadway. How many points is that worth?
apneaman on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 1:29 pm
planty have you ever got shitfaced for 8 days straight all the while shooting cocaine into you arms? I used to do that for years and do all sorts of fucked up shit while under the influence – some first class intergalactic traveling there I tell ya. Bet you never been on one of those trips have ya?
apneaman on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 1:38 pm
How Many People in the World Are Actually Poor?
Good news: Economists at Oxford have come up with a better method for measuring global poverty. Bad news: There are way more poor people than previously thought.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/weve-been-measuring-the-number-of-poor-people-in-the-world-wrong/373073/
apneaman on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 1:41 pm
How unrealistic optimism is maintained in the face of reality
Abstract
Unrealistic optimism is a pervasive human trait that influences domains ranging from personal relationships to politics and finance. How people maintain unrealistic optimism, despite frequently encountering information that challenges those biased beliefs, is unknown. We examined this question and found a marked asymmetry in belief updating. Participants updated their beliefs more in response to information that was better than expected than to information that was worse. This selectivity was mediated by a relative failure to code for errors that should reduce optimism. Distinct regions of the prefrontal cortex tracked estimation errors when those called for positive update, both in individuals who scored high and low on trait optimism. However, highly optimistic individuals exhibited reduced tracking of estimation errors that called for negative update in right inferior prefrontal gyrus. These findings indicate that optimism is tied to a selective update failure and diminished neural coding of undesirable information regarding the future.
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v14/n11/full/nn.2949.html
apneaman on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 1:47 pm
Sierra Nevada snowpack lowest in 500 years
http://phys.org/news/2015-09-sierra-nev … years.html
Plantagenet on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 1:51 pm
@apeman
You are right—I never indulged in the kind of drug abuse that you did.
I was always much more interested in learning things and doing new things and seeing new things and traveling and exploring the world.
I still am interested in the same things now. In the last two years I’ve been in Spain, Holland, Tanzania (climbing Kilimanjaro and visiting the Serengetti) Holland again, Denmark, Portugal, Ireland, Spain again, Morocco and now India. My next trip is to Sicily and then to Rome and central Italy.
Personally, I think you wasted your time and money doing drugs and getting high, and you probably damaged your health as well. You can get lost in your own fantasies and delusions if you want, but for me the real world is much more interesting.
Cheers!
Davy on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 2:21 pm
Citi Just Made “Global Recession In 2016” Its Base Case Scenario
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-14/citi-just-made-global-recession-2016-its-base-case-scenario
This is Citi’s punchline: “A global recession starting in 2016, led by China is now our Global Economics team’s main scenario. Uncertainty remains, but the likelihood of a timely and effective policy response seems to be diminishing.”
apneaman on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 2:33 pm
Planty you are tied with a couple of others for the biggest fantasists on here. Better get you trips in while you can – time is short. My favorite fantasy of yours is planting a tree as a carbon offset then getting on a jet and flying around the world and thinking it’s a wash. Fucking apes and are completely self deluded.
americandream on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 3:16 pm
To all
It is in no inhabitants interests other than the minority to prolong the economic apartheid that saw a small but sufficient enough percentage of the globe set about frying the globe.
Globalisation will put that process on steroids and encourage either a resolution or render us as a species extinct.
But it is in NO ONEs interest to sustain the Plantys of this world but Plantys alone.
Socialism or death!!!!!!
Plantagenet on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 3:43 pm
apeman
Just because you’ve wasted your life and ruined your health mainlining cocaine doesn’t mean other people have to be that stupid.
AD
Given the millions of state-sanctioned murders carried out by national socialists in Germany and international socialists in the USSR and Mao’s China, shouldn’t your slogan be “Socialism AND death?”
Cheers!
apneaman on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 4:48 pm
No planty I did all that while I did all the rest of the “normal” working paying taxes bullshit too. If you had more that a cartoon version of the world in your head you would understand that it’s an illusion. Wasn’t your right wing hero Rush high as a kite for years on pain pills – buying and taking more than prescribed – while telling the good conservatives of America the truth? If it’s good enough for Rush it’s good enough for me. You really have no idea what goes on in the real world do you planty? No idea of what people are up to behind closed doors and off camera. Everyone is getting high on something and everyone’s fucking everyone too and everyone is pretending they are not.
Truth Has A Liberal Bias on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 6:06 pm
Plant went to holland twice and didn’t touch drugs. You’re a fucking loser bro. Now I know why you’re brain is so up tight. For a guy who claims to have enjoyed his life learning new things you sure are fucking stupid. For example your difficulty understanding that Egypt is soon to be a NatGas importer. That information is not exactly carved in a stone tablet and hidden on the dark side of the moon (a great album to listen to when you’re high). Yet the suggestion that Egypt will soon become a natural gas importer really stumps you because you just heard they discovered a bunch. You’re a typical stupid American and as is typical with stupid Americans you think you’re pretty smart.
CHEERS! (retard)
americandream on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 6:12 pm
Planty
Introducing any form of modernity is not without the loss of blood as you clearly must know with your regionalist attempts to restrict capitalism to a few of the whiter and more recently Jewish hue (a Pauline conversion after you slaughtered 6 million of them and shipped off the rest of Palestine)…hahaha…deluded fool.
So why should we socialists be any the different. You think we should bother to rehabilitate the woefully obstinate?
apneaman on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 6:34 pm
Gov. Brown on NorCal wildfires: This is serious stuff and will get worse
Cal Fire: 11,000 firefighters battling 12 major fires across California
We are 1,500 fires above average,” Pimlott said. “We don’t hear about that because of the work the firefighters are doing across the state. Some fires escape the initial attack. That is what we’ve seen with the Butte Fire and Lake County fire.”
There were about 4,500 wildfires last year, but there have already been about 6,000 fires in 2015.”
“We do not see an end to the fire season for the months ahead,” Pimlott said. “Gov. Brown provided additional funding just last week, and we now have six more private helicopters to aid in these fires. We have also added additional firefighters because we are in this for the long haul.”
Monday’s news conference came one day after Brown declared a state of emergency in Lake and Napa counties, where the 61,000-acre Valley Fire destroyed hundreds of homes and many more businesses and structures. A state of emergency was also been declared in Amador and Calaveras counties, where the Butte Fire is burning.”
During his remarks, Brown addressed climate change and the need for something to be done.
“There is no doubt that we need to de-carbonize our modern economy,” Brown said. “We have sharpened what the debate is because there are a vast amount of officials that say it isn’t true. This will smoke it out. Fires are not political. Climate change is not political. It is real.”
http://www.kcra.com/california-wildfires/gov-jerry-brown-speaks-on-california-raging-wildfires/35263788
apneaman on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 6:40 pm
NASA: World Just Saw its Hottest June, July and August on Record
http://robertscribbler.com/2015/09/14/nasa-world-just-saw-its-hottest-june-july-and-august-on-record/
Makati1 on Mon, 14th Sep 2015 9:08 pm
BC, I don’t see a Western war with china. If the US is stupid enough to try a shooting war, China may get pounded, but so will the 50 states of debt and it’s NATO pimps. Russia is not going to stand aside this time and they have the power to take down the Empire anytime they choose. The Us knows it and is trying all of the other options to weaken both. Not going to happen.
But then, Mother Nature is going to have the last laugh, and in our lifetime, I think.
Kenz300 on Tue, 15th Sep 2015 9:34 am
Climate Change is real….. we need to deal with the cause (fossil fuels)
Listen Up: Pope Calls for the Replacement of Fossil Fuels, Renewable Energy and Solar Subsidies – Renewable Energy World
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2015/07/listen-up-pope-calls-for-the-replacement-of-fossil-fuels-renewable-energy-and-solar-subsidies.html