How to change the face of conflict Research Paper

How to change the face of conflict - Research Paper Example The definition of political conflict becomes more critical when armed combats are involved in the forces of at least one state to gain control over other states and when at least 1000 people are killed in such political conflict, it is identified as Armed Conflict (Dani, 2009). Historically, many conflicts have arises in the form of civil wars for the possession of vital resources such as water, metals like gold, silver, copper, petroleum and many more since 17th and 18th centuries from the commencement of World War I. During the last decade, many of such conflicts took place in Liberia, Sierra, Somalia, Sudan, Chechnya, Chiapas, Congo and Indonesia driven by the struggle of parties involved to take control over critical resources. Such resource conflicts are becoming more prominent and frequencies are also increasing as the demand for such scarce resources are exceeding the supply of the same. Competition to surmount the valuable oil supplies and pipeline routs is the source of conflict in 21st century. With the growing demand of oil and declining capacity of supply from the United States, Mexico and China, the concentration is shifting towards Gulf countries, South America and Africa. According to the experts’ opinion, the rivalry for oil was init iated in 1991 with Persian Gulf Conflict which is still continuing with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. For further complications, incidents such as attacking the inhabitants who resides near the major oil producing fields and pipeline locations from guerrillas and terrorists have been experienced in recent economy (Connaughton, 2013). Conflict gives rise to the economic divergence in international landscape. From Sierra to Angola and Cambodia, conflicts to surmount control over scarce resources leads armies and militants to violate human rights by the means of murder, rape and other violent measures imposed on civilians. For instance, countries like Democratic Republic of Congo