Our
Children Are More Likely To
Grow Up in a Violent World
By JONATHAN
POWER
April 25, 2000
LONDON - We live in a time of one of the world's
most profoundest paradoxes- whilst warfare for eight
consecutive years has been on a steady downward decrease,
individual violence is soaring. Of course, one dramatic
event, say nuclear war between India and Pakistan, would
make nonsense of the paradox in an instance. Still, for
the moment it holds and, given the factors at play, is
quite likely to sharpen.
I was provoked into this observation by reading an
essay in the current issue of Foreign Policy by two
researchers at the Inter-American Development bank, Mayra
Buvinic and Andrew Morrison. They show that homicide
rates around the world (the most reliable measure of
individual violence) increased by more than 50% between
1980-84 and 1990-94. In the industrialized world the
increase was 15%. It was up by 80% in Latin America and
112% in the Arab world. However both Asia and the Pacific
had declining rates, although in China there was a sharp
increase too.
More up to date figures, although not available for
every part of the globe, show that the rate of increase
in homicides has accelerated, particularly in Latin
America and Africa.
There are many reasons for this. The machismo ways of
the Latin American male has clearly had something to do
with that continent's high rate. Likewise, it is fair to
surmise that Buddhist influence has deterred violence in
many parts of Asia. Universally, emotional negligence or
physical abuse in early childhood is obviously a crucible
for the development of violence in the next
generation.
Yet over and above all these influences is the
undeniable power of the pressures of demography and its
concomitance, the sharp rise in the numbers of young
people who are always the ones most tempted by
aggression. By the 1980s, after two decades of
phenomenally fast growth, in many parts of the Third
World more than one fifth of the population was aged
18-24.
Despite this tide peaking nearly two decades ago,
homicide rates have not ebbed. Once aggressive behavior
is embedded it becomes difficult to quickly root it out.
It both transmits itself to the next generation and stays
ingrained in the present generation, even as they age.
Moreover, often society starts to tolerate more violence
than it used to. One can see one vivid example of this
with British football violence. Society took it on the
chin for too long; it took the authorities the best part
of a decade to move to try and control and suppress
it.
Population density exaggerates the impact of
population growth. The size of many cities has grown
exponentially over the last two decades. Even as overall
population growth has slowed, the burst of people
flooding to the cities shows little sign of abatement.
Cities, especially the new upstart parts of them, have
few built-in social controls.
It is in these mushrooming cities, moreover, that the
number of children born out of wedlock has increased most
rapidly, particularly in Africa and Latin America. An
unwanted child is an extremely vulnerable creature; the
explosion in the numbers of street children now rampant
in many parts of the world means that growing up right
now are hundreds of thousands who owe little loyalty to
the normal constraints of society. Violence could well
take another surge forward as they come of age. A recent
study in the U.S. argued that increases in abortion rates
are associated with declining murder rates. Despite its
controversial conclusion it has the ring of truth.
Anything that cuts the number of unwanted children- and
adoption would undoubtedly be the preferred option- will
have a benign effect.
The question begged by today's charged debate is: has
globalization lit the fuse of the bomb that has already
been packed? It will take a lot to shake my personal
conviction that this present day economic charge is not a
good thing. No country in the world has made progress
without freer trade and the opening of its economy. Yet
there can be no question that it has sharpened
disparities of income, even as the proportion of people
living in extreme poverty has fallen.
There is an answer to the dilemma. There is no country
on earth that cannot afford to do more for their poor.
What is needed is a better targeting and use of the money
set aside to relieve poverty. Simply to ensure that young
girls get educated would make the world of a difference
not just to the rate of poverty and population increase,
but to the future growth of violence.
The rich countries can do their bit too; they pour
water on the flames. Of all the faults of globalization,
nothing is worse than the export of violent and prurient
images by cinema, video and television to friable
societies who have neither the background nor the
"sophistication" to separate fact from fiction and
whimsicality from actuality. Second, is the drug trade.
Culpability is widely spread, but at the end of the day
no one is more to blame than the main consuming nations.
With their absurd policy of prohibition they have
criminalized the selling and buying of drugs beyond all
measure. No single act of conscious policy has so
increased the rate of crime.
Pity our children. This is their inheritance. Against
everything we intended. The remedies stare at us.
I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail:
JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2000 By JONATHAN POWER
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