WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – A new World Bank report, challenging a view long embraced by global institutions, says high economic growth alone cannot reduce the poverty and unemployment that breed conflict and violence.
The World Bank’s World Development Report released late on Sunday shows instead that access to jobs, security and justice, not higher gross domestic product, are key to breaking repeated cycles of political and criminal violence.
“High unemployment and inequality can combine with weakness in government capacity or problems of corruption, accountability and human rights abuses, to create risks of conflict and violence,” said Sarah Cliffe, one of the lead authors of the report.
Such thinking resonates in the unrest engulfing countries across the Middle East and North Africa from Tunisia to Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain and fighting in Libya where the government is struggling to survive.
Growth rates in Tunisia and Egypt averaged 5 percent or higher annually, enough to reduce poverty, but it failed to benefit the masses and address repression, corruption and high unemployment, which led to protests that toppled their rulers.
