INCREASED POVERTY LEADS TO MORE WARS

Info-Prod Research (Middle East), May, 2003

With few exceptions, the wars of the past few decades have been civil wars. Now the World Bank is sounding the alarm, and has documented that, as a rule, these wars are most often sparked by the economy and lack of development, and seldom by ethnic differences. According to Paul Collier, Director of the Development Research Group at the World Bank, if you examine a country's recent history, you'll find that it is most often economic factors that generate war and conflict.

The struggle for resources is often one of the major causes of internal conflicts. One of the conclusions arrived at by the World Bank is that the risk of civil war increases dramatically in keeping with the level of poverty in a country. Such conflicts, in turn, destroy the basis for development.(Source: Odin.dep.no)