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Authors

Kent

Abstract

Structural violence is harm imposed by some people on others indirectly, through the social system, as they pursue their own preferences. Its effects are clear in the massive mortality of children. More than ten million children die before their fifth birthdays every single year. For most children, the immediate cause of death is a combination of malnutrition and ordinary diseases such as diarrhea, malaria, and measles. Given adequate resources, such diseases are readily managed. The limited allocation of resources to meeting children's needs is due more to the ways in which available resources are used than to the absolute shortage of resources. The failure to introduce effective policies and programs for reducing children's mortality (immunization, for example) should sensibly lead to charges of neglect by national governments and the international community. Globally, children's mortality is so massive, so persistent, and so unnecessary, it should be recognized as a kind of genocide.

DOI

101163/187219106777304269

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