Photo by: Daniel Stuben https://unsplash.com/photos/0U5z1uyOLS8?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditShareLink I watched the recent news from Afghanistan in horror. There are no words to describe what is happening there and how it affects the men, women and children. Afghanistan has already been declared a humanitarian crisis with at least half a million people displaced, all in a matter of days. Afghanistan is just one of many places of worsening or continuing conflict. There is Lebanon, Yemen, Mayanmar, Ethiopia, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Palestine, Nigeria, Mali, Congo, South Sudan, Somalia, Ukraine, and many more smaller regional conflicts. 80% of the world's poorest countries are suffering, or have recently suffered, from large scale violent conflict. There are more than 82 million displaced by conflict worldwide (About 1 in 95 people). Reasons for war can be ethnicity, religion, nationalism, economic or territorial gain, and revolutions. Wars can go for years and never gain anything. The cost of war, however, is enormous. Trillions of tax dollars are spent (It is estimated that US taxpayers pay 32 million an hour to fund current military actions). War increases hunger, homelessness, poverty and deepens the medical and environmental crisis. Combined with global warming, conflicts also further increase world hunger and displace people looking for better economic opportunities. Some argue that we need to fight to protect the peace we have. War is also seen as a way to advance humanity in research and use of new technologies. Can we achieve these goals without war? Will war ever end? Sābanto takes place in a future society after fifty years of a global conflict. The front has moved through every part of the world and every country. Three quarters of the world population were killed and more than 90% of those left live in deep poverty. The war is finally over but the horrors of war are still fresh in people's minds. They want peace even though the majority of them have never experienced it. To prevent the next conflict, the world needs to drastically change and ensure that everyone has a palace to live in and they are not going hungry. Humans need to stop fighting and a solution is needed. References:
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/?category=usConflictStatus https://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1122271/ https://web.stanford.edu/~jacksonm/war-overview.pdf https://www.nationalpriorities.org/cost-of/war/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-the-long-run-wars-make-us-safer-and-richer/2014/04/25/a4207660-c965-11e3-a75e-463587891b57_story.html
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