Scholars have examined the causes of conflict. Since the Second World War, four main triggers have been suggested, as described by de Soysa and Gleditsch (1999):

• Modernization: Reaction against rapid development that appears to create equity and cultural gaps between rich and poor, threatening traditional ways of life. Many of the ideological revolutionary movements of the 1950s/60s attributed to this cause.

• Dependency: Rebellion against the subservient role perceived to be imposed upon developing countries by global capitalism. This theory gained prominence during the 1970s as multinational industries became widespread and influential.

• Mobilization: Oppressive state actions trigger disaffected groups to mobilize and resist. The decline of some dictatorial states in Africa and Asia appears to have followed this pattern.

• Stagnation: Frustration when states fail to provide ways to escape poverty and deprivation. This appears to be emerging as a major trigger in recent years, as exemplified in instability and state-collapse situations in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union.

Poverty is a key driver behind stagnation-driven conflicts, according to analyses by the Brundtland Commission (1987), Brown (1996), Collier and Hoeffler (1998), the International Food Policy Research Institute (Messer et al. 1998), Collier (1999), the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (de Soysa and Gleditsch 1999), and the United Nations (1995 and 2001). Former US President and Nobel Laureate Jimmy Carter, and former UNDP Administrator and World Resources Institute founder James Gustave Speth are just a few of many distinguished leaders who have also emphasized this link (Carter 1999; Speth 1994). The poverty-conflict linkage is one of the reasons the United Nations Millennium Declaration places a high priority on halving the number of people living on less than a dollar a day by the year 2015 (UN 2001).

Poverty goes beyond financial suffering. In the developing world it usually involves both material deprivation and vulnerability to social forces as well as to natural disasters (Hazell and Haddad 2001). Material suffering often includes hunger and malnutrition, squalid housing, and a lack of access to sanitary services, health care and education. Social vulnerability includes unemployment, anguish over inability to provide for loved ones, vulnerability to more powerful and exploitative forces in the community or government, and a lack of support systems to buffer against shocks such as natural disasters, health crises and income shortfalls (World Bank 2000-2001).

Poverty breeds despair and desperation, compelling the poor to make previouslyunthinkable choices (Sen 1987). Without hope for a better future, illiterate youth are tempted or coerced into an alternative life of banditry and gang violence for pay and plunder. For example, hunger, poverty and hopelessness were key triggers in the recent instability in Haiti, in brutal conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Rwanda, and in drug-ring terrorism in Colombia and Peru (de Soysa and Gleditsch 1999; Messer et al. 1998 p. 24-25; Weiner 2004).

If stagnant poverty is at the root of many violent conflicts in modern times, what can be done to alleviate it? Alternatives are needed so that the poor will no longer see violence as the only way out.