Stuff You Should Know

The Human Impact of War

Every year, throughout the world, roughly half a million men, women, and children are killed by armed violence – that’s one person every minute.

In World War I, 14% of the total casualties were civilian. In World War II, this figure grew to 67%. The number of civilian casualties in today’s conflicts is often even greater – reaching as high as 90% in some conflicts. Civilians are now often the actual targets in conflicts.

By 2020, the number of deaths and injuries from war and violence will overtake the numbers of deaths caused by killer diseases such as malaria and measles.

Child Soldiers: There are 300,000 child soldiers involved in 30 different conflicts across the globe.

Sexual Violence: Sexual violence is frequently used as a weapon of war and genocide. During the armed conflict in Rwanda, 15,700 women and girls were raped at gunpoint. In Croatia and Bosnia during the civil war, an estimated 25,000 women and girls were victims of sexual violence.

Refugees: At the end of 2002, around thirteen million people were seeking protection outside their own countries, many having fled to escape violent and bloody conflicts and repression.

Economic and Development Consequences: The economic consequences of war are immense. In Africa, the world’s poorest continent, economic losses due to war are about $15 billion per year.

The Global Arms Industry

War is big business. The arms industry is a massive and highly lucrative global industry.

So which states are producing all these weapons? The USA, UK, France, Russia, and China are responsible for almost 90% of reported conventional arms exports. These countries are also the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council which means that they have the special responsibility to maintain international peace and prevent war. This creates a perverse situation where the states that are charged with protecting the world from war are also those who most profit from it.

It is in the economic interest of the major powers, who earn so much from their arms deals, that there is always a war going on somewhere.

The United States is by far the largest exporter of weapons in the world, selling more weapons than the next 14 countries combined. 58% of all US arms trade contracts are made with developing countries.

In the last four years, the US, the UK, and France earned more income from arms exports to Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America than they provided in foreign aid.

Military spending

The world spends more than $1 trillion a year on military expenditures. 

This is at a time when more than a billion people struggle to survive on less than a dollar a day, when 800 million people are suffering from chronic hunger, when one child in five does not complete primary school, and when half a million women die in pregnancy or childbirth annually.

World military expenditure has grown by a third in the past 10 years. This increase has been driven primarily by the US.

Defence spending diverts vital resources away from social necessities such as health and education.

One third of countries spend more on the military than they do on healthcare.

Roughly $22 billion a year is spent on arms by countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America – just half of this amount would enable every child in these regions to attend primary school.

In 1999, South Africa spent $6 billion on arms including submarines, aircraft, helicopters, and frigates. That $6 billion could have been used to treat all of South Africa’s 5 million AIDS sufferers for 2 years.

Nearly half of countries with the highest defence burden rank among the lowest in human development. For example, Eritrea spends over 20 per cent of its GDP on the military.

The United Nations (UN) was set up to be committed to preserving peace through international cooperation and collective security. Yet the UN’s entire budget is just a tiny fraction of the world’s military expenditure, approximately 1.5%.

© 2007-2008 Make Goals Not War™