A Violent World

Today’s world is not only sick – it’s also violent! 

According to the World Health Organization, each year, over 1.6 million people worldwide lose their lives to violence. Violence is among the leading causes of death for people aged 15–44 years worldwide, accounting for 14% of deaths among males and 7% of deaths among females. 

For every person who dies as a result of violence, many more are injured and suffer from a range of physical, sexual, reproductive and mental health problems. Moreover, violence places a massive burden on national economies, costing countries billions of dollars each year in health care, law enforcement and lost productivity. 

Just look at this month – only seven days but already, there's been plenty of bloodshed. 

Last Sunday, armed men in western Ethiopia rounded up and executed dozens of men, women and children in a schoolyard, in a “brutal” attack officials blamed on an armed group that is active in the Oromia region. It is believed at least 54 members of the Amhara ethnic group – Ethiopia’s second-largest – were murdered. 

On Monday, gunmen stormed Kabul University in Kabul, Afghanistan and killed at least 22 and wounded just as many. All three attackers were killed in a six-hour gun battle with government forces.

 

On the same day too, four people were killed and 23 others wounded in a gun attack in the Austrian capital, Vienna. The perpetrator, who was armed with an automatic rifle, a pistol and a machete, was shot dead by police. 

The dismembered bodies of at least five adults and 15 boys were discovered on Monday in Muidumbe district in insurgency-hit northeastern Mozambique. The victims were participating in a male initiation ceremony when they were set upon by suspected militants. 

And on Thursday, Bolivia’s president-elect Luis Arce survived a dynamite attack in La Paz city. Happily, there were no injuries. 

The above are just those which made the big headlines in November todate.

It's time to recognize that violence is not an intractable social problem or an inevitable part of the human condition.