Access to resources is a cause of world order conflicts, however in most cases, world order conflicts are also driven by other issues such as conflict over land, culture and hegemony. Such conflicts are also difficult to stop due to factors such as ongoing demand for products by the developed world and the use of veto power. The conflict in Darfur, Sudan is an example of a world order conflict driven by access to resources, namely water, but is also caused by increasing demographic pressure and political marginalisation. The conflict over access to water in Sudan was catalysed by a decline in rainfall in the area, leading to failed harvests and competition for access to this resource, with other factors such as political marginalization influencing the violence. …show more content…
Difficulties in stopping this world order conflict in Sudan arose from factors such as the use of the veto power in the UN Security Council to prevent the UN imposing sanctions and stopping the conflict. This was seen in China’s use of the veto power in regards to the conflict in Sudan, resulting in a prolonging of the conflict, “China has used its veto at the UN Security Council to block moves to impose sanctions on Sudan unless it stops the fighting in Darfur” (BBC, 2007). Thus, the conflict in Darfur, Sudan is an example of a world order conflict associated with access to resources as well as a conflict which has difficulties stopping due to factors such as use of the veto
War has always been a part of humanity ever since the dawn of modern humans. Wars have started for various different reasons such as territorial disputes, showcase of power, or a struggle between powers. There are many causes of wars from the different levels of analysis examining the roots of the four levels such as individual, state, interstate, and global level. The main reasons why wars start are problems and conflicts in the state level of analysis. Problems within the state eventually create wars.
The effects of war are not temporary - even after fighting stops, an excessive number of people are mentally affected. After fighting in the war for a year, Paul returns home on temporary leave, and notices how he no longer fits in with the civilians in his town. He describes how “formerly [he] lived in just the same way [him]self, but now [he feels] no contact here. [...] They have worries, aims, desires that [he] cannot comprehend” (Document A). The last time that Paul was back home a year ago, he had not yet experienced as much death and loss as he now has.
Darfur is the western region of the African country of Sudan. Currently, the people of Darfur have been continually attacked by the Sudanese army and by proxy-militia controlled by the Sudanese government. Families are being uprooted and starved, children tormented and murdered by the thousands and women raped without punishment. Innocent civilians in Darfur continue to be victims of unthinkable brutality. Many people have become homeless and seek protection in refugee camps in Chad. Yet despite its outward appearance, Darfur has a vast ethnic diversity and a complex, ancient system of resolving conflict. Genocide has occurred in several places around the world, but in Darfur there are certain reasons why it
The conflict in Darfur refers to the fighting that is happening in the western region of Sudan known as Darfur. These fights have been taking place since 2003 and have continued to today. Similarities can be made to the Rwandan Genocide; there is a government funded and armed militia that is not officially supported by the government that is killing a local population. The citizens of the region of Darfur that are being killed are not Arabic, like the majority of the rest of Sudan is, however, they are more similar in culture and other aspects to the citizens of South Sudan, Sudan’s neighboring country to the south with which Sudan has had multiple wars with. Despite the fact that there is a militia that is killing citizens, there are also other militias that are fighting for the Darfuri people. These two sides have been fighting each other for close to ten years. Even though citizens of a certain group are being targeted by a militia, the conflict in Darfur is not a genocide. The United States should not get involved militarily in this conflict because it is only a conflict and not a genocide. It is a war between two groups over disputes between these groups. Instead, the United States should use diplomacy to help end the conflict happening in Darfur.
In recent times, the media has highlighted the genocide that has been occurring in Darfur, Sudan. Darfur, Sudan is a country roughly the size of the state of Texas (Darfur Scores, n.d.). Genocide is the systematic killing of an entire ethnic group of people from a national, ethnic, or religious group, or an attempt to do away with them all (Darfur Scores, n.d.). Beginning around 2003, according to Darfur Scores (n.d.), “the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the government-sponsored Janjaweed militia have used rape, displacement, organized starvation, threats against aid workers and mass murder. Violence, disease, and displacement continue to kill thousands of innocent Darfurians every month.”
The origin of the war between these two regions goes back to the 1950s when the country, which was previously two separate nations, was made one after World War II by the west. Shortly after this union, Sudan was emancipated from England. 1983 marks the beginning of the violent relations between the North and South Sudan. The initiation of this conflict was brought forth by the Islamic Sudanese of the North, invading with military force the Southern Sudanese Christians . From 1983, it is estimated that at least two million people have been killed in the violent duration of this genocide, most of whom are of the Christian faith and lead non-violent civilian lives. Attention on human trafficking was brought into the international community’s scope with close proximity to the beginning of the violence as two professors from the University of Khartoum shed light on the subject. Ushari Ahmad Mahumud and Suleyman Ali Baldo learned about the genocide and enslavement being practiced on the Dinka people, a tribal group in the southern Sudan, and upon this discovery they dicided to investigate it further. What they found was that raiders from the north were killing the Southern Christian men and kidnapping the women and children to be sold into slavery. The most disturbing part of this discovery was the newfound knowledge that this had been going on for over two years. Professors Mahumud and Baldo
The global powers failed to step in quickly and took so long that a mister Eric Reeves had time to write an article called The World’s Abandonment of Darfur in which he writes “The United States, Britain and France need to muscle up politically in the Security Council now or the fate of Darfur will be dictated by the very men who began the genocide 12 years ago. This would be unprecedented in the grim history of genocide” (Reeves). Clearly, the global superpowers need to step up their game in the international community to help stop things like this from happening in the future. If these countries could not even prevent the same tragic events from happening back to back, that is terrible. Granted, the restructuring of a state can be a long and difficult project to undertake, just look at the Middle East and the United States’ involvement, but it is necessary to make sure that the same people, or any people at all, are incriminated and tortured like those living in the Darfur region were. The global heavyweights, at least, need to intervene in any restructuring post-genocide to ensure that the county does not fall back into a state in which mass killings are taking
As one may already know, the assassination of the Archduke at Austria-Hungary, Francis Ferdinand, led to World War One. This is an example of an immediate cause of World War One. An immediate cause is the last action made that started a big event. An underlying cause is an idea that causes uproar and dispute and if left without attention, can lead to a big issue. An example this would be the Civil War and their issue about slavery. Slavery would be the underlying cause of the Civil War. World War One’s underlying causes are different though. The underlying causes of World War One would be nationalism, imperialism, and
The ambition of the often autocratic leaders to acquire more land, which may bring them access to oil, water or arable land. The problem according to Sørli et. al is “scarcity” and “abundance” (147). Water is scarce, and oil is in abundance, but the access to both is limited. According to our text, the new “water wars” have emerged as a major source of conflict, in addition to the “oil wars” (Anderson et. al, 226). Water is scarce in the Middle East, and will continue to dwindle as the population rises. Not every country has the same access to the water sources, which will naturally cause problems. For example, Israel has control of the Golan, and Egypt of the Nile, and Kuwait of the Persian Gulf. Oil is in abundance, but only to a limited number of countries in the Middle East causing great economic disparity between those who have, and those who do not. Kuwait, having access to the Persian Gulf, produces a large supply of oil to international players. Given its high value internationally, and its worth, oil is much sought after.
The article by Thomas Homer-Dixon discusses how scarcity of renewable resources, in combination with other social factors, can cause violent clashes. Scarcity alone does not cause violence, it requires other factors such as inequality, migration, and the functioning of social institutions. He states that in a society with shortage of renewable resource, the elites within a society keep the bulk of the resources for themselves. The cycle of scarcity and violence lead to further scarcity. He gives many examples of resources that when scarce lead to violence. However, there is not a clear solution provided that would solve this problem.
The United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that 250,000 IDP’s are displaced because of the conflict in South Sudan. Lizabeth Paulat, a member of Truthout, a think tank, writes that the violence is directly causing a potentially massive famine within the region. “This threat of starvation is not occurring because of a natural scarcity, or even a political attempt to starve out opponents,” says Paulat, “rather, this is an issue of South Sudan’s internal refugees, forced to flee their homes to escape violence.” With such a high volume of IDP’s and a projected record breaking famine, the international community must intervene to assist President Kiir and the South Sudanese Government.
The “resource curse” is a popular theory in the literature of civil conflict that attributes the onset of civil conflict to the presence and abundance of natural resources. In recent years, a growing number of quantitative empirical studies have attempted to investigate the link between natural resources and conflict, but researchers are still unable to make a definitive call on whether natural resources necessarily cause conflict in broad terms. In this paper, I will attempt to show that the theory of the “resource curse” lacks persuasive power due to: 1) a theoretical ambiguity on the true impact of natural resources on conflict and, 2) a lack of strong empirical support for the “resource curse”. In the process, I will also show that despite there being no general consensus on how natural resources contribute to conflict across countries as a whole, individual studies have been able to establish that some key factors, such as the extent of a country’s dependence on natural resources and the presence of certain types of primary commodities in a country, may affect the relationship between resources and conflict.
However, it does not seem as if the United States hopes of having a western friendly nation in a volatile region will occur as both nations continue to spend a large sum of the money invested arming their militias in preparation for more fighting (NYT 2012). In a short time, it became apparent that neither country would survive without some form of negotiation. While an agreement would in no way put an end to the violence between the two states, it would prevent them from spiraling toward an economic disaster. In recent news, with massive pressure from many international governmental organizations such as the United Nations Security Council, or the UN, Sudan President Omar al-Bashir and South Sudan President Salva Kiir have been in constant communication to negotiate a proper price regarding the exportation and processing of the oil. The UN approved a resolution in May 2012 threatening economic sanctions if an agreement could not be made between the two nations. The UN feared that the fighting in Sudan and South Sudan would spread across the continent, posing a "serious threat to international peace". Even Russia and China, who have resisted voting against sanctions in Sudan in the past have approved such resolutions (Kron). Without international support, Sudan and South Sudan would not be able to survive, and thus have been forced to speed up negotiations. While the finishing touches of
Religion, socio-economic problems, land problems etc. are the main reasons that lead to conflict. But, recent study has come to show that an integral cause of conflict is a lack of resources; whether in a country, village, or even a business. Resources such as time, money and equipment are often scarce. Looking from a business perspective, when a certain group of employees get access to resources that others do not, conflict may arise among employees or between employees and management. And now a days, even a lack of vital natural resources are leading to conflicts. Managing conflicts and disputes that are related to natural resources is more critical than ever before. As economy and population growth increase levels of global consumption,
The world has seen less large-scale conflict in the 21st century, yet there have been increased small scale conflicts like the war in Syria. The civil war which is so large it has actually spilled into open conflict in Iraq and the border of Turkey has displaced millions of people. Conflicts like this can disrupt food supplies across entire regions as armies try to starve out each other’s populations. Africa has experienced these kinds of conflicts again and again, such as in Rwanda, Sierra-Leone, Somalia, as well as the Congo.