Structural violence causes mortality and contemporary slavery

Healthcare, Nutrition, and Liberty Disparities As we have already stated, structural violence can take many forms and can be so entrenched in the social order that it is difficult to recognize. In this section, we will examine a few of the more widespread and recognizable ways in which structural violence can manifest in society. One of the most pressing ways in which structural violence causes morbidity and mortality in people is through healthcare disparities. Preventable diseases such as diarrhea and pneumonia kill approximately two million children worldwide every year, simply because they are too poor to afford the effective treatment that is available (United Nations Children’s Fund [UNICEF], 2012). As of 2013, nearly 22 million children under the age of one had not received proper vac-cinations against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (UNICEF & WHO, 2014). In 2010, almost 300,000 childbirth‐related deaths occurred globally, most of them in low‐ and middle‐income countries, and most of them avoidable (WHO, UNICEF, United Nations Population Fund [UNFPA], & The World Bank, 2012). Over the past 50years, the maternal mortality rate of black women in the US has been four times as high as that of white women (Tucker, Berg, Callaghan, & Hsia, 2007). In 2007, the infant mortality rate for non‐Hispanic black women was 2.4 times that of non‐Hispanic white women (Mathews & MacDorman, 2011).One of the deadlier healthcare disparities pertains to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. Studies indicate that 88% of all children and 60% of all women infected with HIV live in sub‐Saharan Africa, where nations are typically low‐income and underdeveloped. In 2007, an estimated 40 million people were living with HIV, more than 90% of them from low‐income countries with limited access to prevention and treatment facilities. Reasons for inadequate resources can be variable: in Northern Uganda, for example, which has been terrorized by the resistance army for over 15years, an internal displacement of 1.8million people has led to the virtual collapse of public services in the refugee camps. Consequently, the HIV prevalence in this northern region is twice that of the rest of the country (Mukherjee, 2007). Even in the US, infection rates among women of color are higher than among white women. In the Syracuse area of New York, African‐American women have 12.5 times more cases of AIDS than whites (Lane et al., 2004).Increasing poverty is another symptom and indication of structural violence. The inability to afford basic nutrition for survival is a mark of extreme poverty, but according to the United Nations World Food Programme (UNWFP, 2016), malnutrition is the leading cause of death globally, killing more people each year than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined. More than three billion people—nearly half of the world’s population—live in poverty (on less than 2.5 US dollars per day), while more than 1.3billion live in extreme poverty (on less than 1.25US dollars per day) (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], 2014). Nearly half of all deaths in children under the age of 5 are attributable to undernutrition, amounting to almost three million unnecessary deaths every year (UNICEF, WHO, & World Bank Group, 2015). Approximately 800 million people—almost 11% of the world’s population, 98% of whom live in low‐income countries—lack adequate food (Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] of the UN, International Fund for Agricultural Development [IFAD], & UNWFP, 2014).More than 750 million people lack access to clean, drinkable water, and low sanitation alone kills an estimated 842,000 people every year (WHO & UNICEF, 2014). Haiti, for example, is one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere. In that country, more than 54% of the population lives on less than one US dollar per day, and cholera outbreaks are endemic, as only 63% of the citizens have access to safe water sources (Alsan et al., 2011). According to Oxfam International (2013), it would take an estimated 60 billion US dollars annually to eradicate extreme global poverty. This figure seems unattainable and unrealistic until one considers that the world’s 10 richest billionaires own some 505 billion US dollars in combined private wealth (Peterson‐Withorn, 2015) and that the top 1% of earners holds more wealth than the rest of the planet combined (Credit Suisse, 2016) (see Figure 7.1). Charity and aid to the unfortunate, in this con-text, does little to solve the deformed statecraft that magnifies and accelerates such cruelty. The related but more extreme form of structural violence is contemporary slavery, which exists in the form of underpayment and the withholding of wages and salaries, especially to workers from low-income countries. An estimated 35.8 million people are victims of contem-porary slavery (Walk Free Foundation, 2014), and 10 nations account for 76 percent of this number, including India, China, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Although accurate figures are diffi-cult to calculate, this multibillion-dollar industry reaps up to 150 billion US dollars annually in illegal profits (International Labour Organization, 2008). Approximately 70 percent of mod-ern-day slaves are female, and up to 50 percent are minors (United States Department of State, 2005). Women and girls are forced to work primarily in the domestic sector or as commercial sex workers, while men and boys work primarily in agriculture, construction, and mining. The root causes of contemporary slavery are disparities in economic power that force citizens from low-income economies to submit to forms of slavery and human trafficking in exchange for better standards of living. The problem is not restricted to underdeveloped countries: there are case reports in the U.S. of illegal Mexican immigrants being lured into the country with promises by wealthy American families who then deny them wages (Barner, Okech, and Camp, 2014). Similarly, many citizens from developing West African nations have become victims of human traffick-ing in other high-income economies. These unfortunate laborers are typically enticed to foreign destinations with promises of a better income, only to experience exploitation as commercial sex workers or as free laborers. Given the lack of privileges of these victims, they cannot access justice for the damages they have endured. More generally, with global indus-trialization, the exploitation of child and female labor, urban crowding, slums, poverty, dis-ease, prostitution, and family breakdown have grown. World conflict now occurs largely in the form of differences in interests between elites who run economic and political systems and the majority of people who do not benefit from their policies and actions. Consequently, slavery is in rapid resurgence in the context of extreme inequality.