But what are the age-old causes of these wars or "humanitarian emergencies" and can they be prevented? According to a Kansas State University distinguished professor of economics, since the end of the cold war, civil wars and state violence have escalated, resulting in millions of deaths. These conflicts are often rooted in greed and grievances from wealth and power discrepancies and are likely to occur where the state is weak, venal and subject to extensive "rent-seeking," a policy to obtain private benefit from public resources. Governing elites gain more from extensive unproductive, profit-seizing activities in a political system they control than from long-term efforts to build a democratic and prosperous state.
E. Wayne Nafziger, a noted expert in international economics, along with Raimo Vayrynen, professor of government and international studies and senior fellow, Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, are the editors of the book, "The Prevention of Humanitarian Emergencies," published by Palgrave/Macmillan. The pair are also directors of the United Nations University/World Institute for Development Economics Research's project on Humanitarian Emergencies. The book is the third of a series edited by Nafziger and Vayrynen, which includes two volumes edited in 2000 with Oxford University's Frances Stewart.
Nafziger said the book provides an analysis and an inventory of instruments for donors, international agencies and developing countries to prevent humanitarian emergencies. The emphasis is on long-term development policies rather than mediation or reconstruction after the conflict begins.
Policies include democratic and institutional reforms to enhance the capabilities of the state and civil society, acceleration of economic growth through macroeconomic stabilization and adjustment, reducing inequalities, redesigning and expansion of aid, and opening of the Northern markets to developing countries.
"Our contention is that the largest number of deaths from humanitarian emergencies occurs disproportionately in developing countries; in low income countries," Nafziger said. "We have an explanation as to why that is so."
Nafziger, who was resident director of the WIDER project in Helsinki, Finland, from 1996-98, said economic contributors such as low average income, protracted economic stagnation and decline, chronic international deficits, large income inequality, and conflict over mineral exports such as those in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Liberia are often causes of these humanitarian emergencies. Past failures from Afghanistan to Zaire indicate the importance of prevention strategies.
According to Nafziger, the most promising solutions are long-term economic approaches, institutional peace building, defense of human rights, and third-party presence in the conflict zone.
"We try to look at this in terms of what you can do in the long term," Nafziger said. "Most of the book's contributors have suggested that short-term military solutions don't work very well.
The book focuses on some of the global hot spots where the state is involved in murder of its citizens including Angola, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Rwanda and Afghanistan -- before the most recent conflict. Nafziger indicated that the book is more applicable to preventing this type of terrorism by the state or by warlords, the most frequent contributor to deaths from humanitarian emergencies, than terrorism by those trying to undermine the state.
Nafziger said the book's contributors emphasize prevention measures 10-15 years in advance by the international community, donor countries and the developing countries themselves. Prevention measures include contributing to economic development, democratization or political integration over a long period to try to reduce the chances of having large numbers of deaths from humanitarian emergencies.
"You have a much better chance of trying to reconstruct a political or economic system that has been damaged, or reduce the number of deaths from humanitarian emergencies that way, than trying to resolve the issue when the conflict is just about ready to begin, " Nafziger said.