Causes Of Conflict In Civil War

Violent conflict has become commonplace with the growth of civil wars within the last few decades, with a significant portion of countries having been involved in such a conflict since the 1960’s. The frequency of civil wars in modern society means this essay takes the prime focus of civil war conflicts. There are many different causes of violent conflict, this essay will focus on two of these causes. The first will be the socio-economic factor of horizontal inequality and poverty within these countries. This factor puts emphasis on fact that countries that have high levels of poverty and inequality along ethnic, regional or political lines, tend to participate in the most violent conflicts. The second cause of violent conflict which this …show more content…
Doe used the unification of Liberian indigenous groups to ascend to presidency but during his reign most of the political positions were given to Krahn’s; members of his ethnic group. The armed forces, the police and other key political institutions were dominated by Krahn’s. This political inequality was used as a catalyst to the start of the violent conflict. A refute of this argument that the conflicts are mainly caused by grievance factors of ethnic inequality is discussed by African Historian Stephen Ellis. Ellis argues that ethnic groups like Krahn, are words which have been developed in recent years as is the case with several African states. Ellis also points out that ethnicity seems more rhetoric than reality as most groups had diverse members from several ethnicities. Suggesting that the use of groups of political and ethnic orientation is a cover up for the ‘greed’ factors which are the real catalyst for the causes of violent conflict. It would still be wrong to state that ethnic mobilisation was not a key factor in the participation of the local …show more content…
World bank researchers Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler dismiss the use of Gini, an index of economic inequality within a country. They argue that there was not enough data from the period in which the Liberian Civil War took place, for this to be properly analysed. In relation to the Liberian Civil War, this essay has not found any GINI index being available for Liberia until 2007. Nafsiger and Auvinen looked at Gini generally and using GINI, they argued that economic inequality played a significant role in whether a country was involved in a civil war. To complement this, Patricia Justino has done research into who is more likely to participate in a civil war and those who are poorer are more likely to participate in the conflict along with those who benefit from the status quo. Showing that the two groups which participate are the two groups in which the horizontal inequalities mostly