Background
- Poverty and Violence
- Conflict for Profit
- Peace through Advocacy
POVERTY AND VIOLENCE: A DEADLY MIX
Conflict is one of the major reasons that millions of poor people are unable to escape poverty. Preventing conflict starts at the local level. Oxfam helps communities identify the root causes of conflict and find creative ways to build lasting peace.
Major conflicts can set back the development of a country for generations. But the nearly constant, low-level instability in some countries is just as bad. The Horn of Africa and areas of Senegal—and many others—are all places where slow-burning conflicts at the local level prevent communities from supporting themselves.
Disputes become bloody conflicts in areas where the lack of resources and easy availability of firearms creates a deadly mix. Most of these low-level wars and local disputes occur well out of the eye of the media, causing inadequate resources to be devoted to both resolving the conflict and helping the affected people.
Low-level conflicts can take many forms: disagreements between farming communities and nomadic herders over spring waters; fishing lot owners and local people clashing over fishing rights; and displaced people seeking a place to live in already overburdened areas. The inability to access the basic resources needed to survive—like water—is at the root of these conflicts. When communities are unable to resolve disagreements before they become deadly, violence can be the result.