Below are some of the interesting facts and figures from World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security and Development:
- No low income fragile or conflict-affected country has yet achieved a single Millennium Development Goal. Violence is the main constraint to meeting the MDGs.
- Poverty rates are 20 percentage points higher in countries affected by repeated cycles of violence over the last three decades. Every year of violence in a country is associated with lagging poverty reduction of nearly one percentage point.
- 1.5 billion people live in countries affected by organized violence, either currently or recovering from political violence, fragility and/or high levels of homicide.
- People living in countries currently affected by violence are twice as likely to be undernourished and 50 percent more likely to be impoverished. Their children are three times as likely to be out of school.
- 42 million people (roughly equivalent to the entire population of Canada or Poland) are displaced today as a result of conflict, violence or human rights abuses. Of these, 15 million are refugees outside their country and 27 million are displaced internally within their own country.
- Countries with recent human rights abuses are far more likely to experience conflict than countries with a strong history of respect for human rights. Each one-step deterioration on the five point Political Terror Scale - which measures arbitrary detention for nonviolent political activity, torture, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings - resulted in a more than 43 percent increase in the risk of civil war in the following five years.
- Countries with weak government effectiveness, rule of law, and control of corruption have a 30 - 45 percent higher risk of civil war, and significantly higher risk of extreme criminal violence than other developing countries.
- 90 percent of civil wars in the 21st century occurred in countries that already had a civil war in the previous 30 years.
- The global trade in cocaine and heroin, which are largely produced in countries affected by conflict and violence, is valued at $153 billion. The drug trade is the largest income component of global organized crime and is roughly comparable to the global total of official development assistance (ODA, which equaled $110 billion in 2010).
- It took the 20 fastest reforming countries in the 20 century between 15 and 30 years – a generation – to raise their institutional performance from very fragile to more resilient levels. Specifically, it took 17 years on average to reduce military interference in politics and 27 years to reduce corruption to establish rules-based controls against corruption.
- Over the last 20 years, on average, a country with 20 years of violence experienced twice the volatility in aid flows of a country that did not experience violence. Revenue volatility has considerable costs for all governments, but particularly for fragile situations where it may derail reform efforts and disrupt institution building.
- Maritime piracy is estimated to have direct economic costs of between $5.7 billion and $11.2 billion, including ransoms, insurance and re-routing. Global efforts to contain and deter it are estimated at between $1.7 and $4.5 billion in 2010.
- The economic spillover effects for countries affected by conflict are often huge. Countries lose an estimated 0.7 percent of their annual GDP for each neighbor involved in civil war.
- What drives people to join rebel movement and gangs? In surveys conducted in six countries and territories affected by violence, the main reasons cited for why young people become rebels or gang members are very similar—unemployment predominates for both. This is not necessarily the case for militant ideological recruitment.
- What are citizens’ views on the drivers of conflict? In surveys conducted in six countries and territories affected by violence, involving a mix of nationally representative samples and subregions, citizens raised issues linked to individual economic welfare (poverty, unemployment) and injustice (including inequality and corruption) as the primary driver of conflict.
