I'm Back: The Third Essay "World Tranquility"

Composed on October 2021

Causes and Effects of Current Disrupted World Tranquility

By Sifaul Lutfiyani

Does tranquility exist in this turmoil world? History has shown us what the world had been through started from the most terrible happenings in World War I and II that deleteriously affected humans’ lives to the Cold War which effects are more about social changes. Those are some of the massive occurrences that had significantly taken away peace from this world. Even though the incidents happened a long time ago, world tranquility is still disturbed until today. Council for Foreign Relations’s (2021) data of global conflict shows that all monitored conflicts that are still happening take place almost in every continent in this world. Thus, the tranquility existence is vulnerable in nearly every corner of it. The current disruption of world tranquility leaves crucial effects on human lives namely anxiety disorder, deaths, and neglected human beings; it is caused by predominant phenomena such as nation conflict, terrorism, and problematic society.

Some of the most noticeable effects of disrupted world tranquility are anxiety disorder, deaths, and neglected human beings. The estimated proportion of the global population with an anxiety disorder was at 3.6% or about 264 million individuals worldwide, and the total for 2015 reflects a 14.9% increase since 2005 (World Health Organization, 2017). It is certainly possible that this number is even higher in the latest years. According to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America (2021) life event is part of the complex set of risk factors that develop anxiety disorder besides genetics, brain chemistry, and personality. Tightening events resulting from disturbing world tranquility contribute to the process of building up anxiety in people. A good illustration of this is when a conflict breaks in a country and makes the people suffering from worries and panic thinking about how they can keep going in the chaotic situation. Hence, anxiety disorder is tightly related to the disruption of world tranquility for creating extern factor causing the disease. Besides, death cases also have a tight bond with the disruption of world tranquility since it brings out the causes such as mental health issues especially anxiety disorder and disturbances resulting from conflicts. Walker et al. (2015) asserted, “people with mental disorders experience a high burden of mortality at the individual and population levels.” They explained, “people with mental disorders have a mortality rate that is 2.22 times higher than the general population or people without the illness. Further to its correlation with suicide, mental disorders are seemed to play a vital role in raising the death rate. In the US, 46% of people who died by suicide had a diagnosed mental health condition, and 90% of them had shown symptoms of it (National Alliance on Mental Illness, 2021). Similar to mental disorders, conflicts also give a great contribution to the death rate rise. Across all 21st century, conflicts resulting in more than 300 battle deaths per country, and homicide rate over 11 (per 100.000 people) (Marc, 2016 ). Two intrastate conflicts that happened in Afghanistan and Yemen resulted in more than 10 000 conflict-related deaths in the year; besides, 16 high-intensity conflicts that happened mostly in Africa and middle-east countries also involved 1000–9999 conflict-related deaths (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2021). In addition, disrupted world tranquility also causes numerous people neglected in many aspects of their lives. For instance, a legion of kids cannot access their education while chaos erupts in their countries. Schools that used to be safe places are now targeted, and children are often attacked while commuting home-school.  Educational facilities are used by forces so that educational activities are blocked. Furthermore, 68.5 million people are now living as refugees, asylum seekers, and stateless people for being displaced forcibly (Kadir, et al., 2018). This condition may lead to other problems such as starvation, poverty, and health issues. “Today two billion people are affected by fragility, conflict or violence and by 2030, half of these people will live in extreme poverty,” asserts IRCR President, Peter Maurer (International Committee of The Red Cross, 2018). Thus, troubled world tranquility is considerably linked to the neglect of people.

The disrupted tranquility of the world has created severe conditions for humans to deal with. However, not only the substantially serious effects but the causes are not less momentous. The three major causes of the disrupted world tranquility are nation conflicts, terrorism, and problematic society.

The first factor causing disrupted world tranquility is nation conflicts. Conflicts between two or among many nations lead to the emergence of unstable and chaotic situations. It then forces the people of the hostile nations to suffer from difficulties. As the result, the conflict leaves great anxiety to them for being affected by the disturbance. ART International (2021) reports that highly stressful and disturbing experiences raise the risk of anxiety by diminishing one's ability to handle emotions throughout life. Moreover, as conflicts seemed to gain from time to time, the number of people getting the impact also keep raising. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (2021) estimated active armed conflicts occurred in at least 39 countries in 2021. Besides, UNHCR’s 2020  annual report showed an exponential growth trend of forced displacement in the last decade; the number of forcibly displaced people in 2019  increased 12.3% from the previous year. OCHA also reports that a total of 235 million people need humanitarian assistance in 2021 which is 40% bigger than the previous year's estimation (Escola de Cultura de Pau, 2021). These conditions captured how conflicts spoil world tranquility by forming tough states for a multitude of people to deal with.

The second cause disrupting the tranquility of this world is terrorism. The movement has been one of the biggest enemies of most countries in the world regardless of the motives. Despite the abundance of criticism and censure fighting against it, terrorism remains exists in numerous countries. Even though terrorism has declined in most regions, it has become more widespread in others. The largest increase develops mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Burkina Faso placed the first position in which deaths increased by 590 percent to 593 followed by Sri Lanka where terrorism deaths increased from one in 2018 to 266 in 2019 (Institute for Economics & Peace, 2020). These incidents leave people in great trauma and trap them in serious anxiety for being unsafe and threatened. García-Vera & Sanz (2016) claims that a large percentage of terrorist attack victims will undergo post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depressive or anxiety disorder. It is also found that 30% of the direct victims and 23% of those close to the injured or deceased will suffer PTSD (García-Vera et al., 2016). Furthermore, the loss of tranquility occurs to the victims and the victor or the one who attacks. Glassman et al. (2004) said that terrorism is to disrupt the victor’s tranquility and security. Despite their winning, the victor cannot enjoy the peace for their deliberate acts of violence that disrupts the peace itself. By that, we can say that terrorism takes away tranquility from the world of all masses involved in the incident.

The third thing contributing to the disruption of world tranquility is problematic society. A society in which a group of individuals shares social interaction is often biased to several particular matters such as gender, race, and ideology. Hence, some peculiar doctrines that disadvantage specific groups of people emerge in the social system just as discrimination leads to the existence of inferior and superior groups of people. To give an idea, gender inequality is one of the types of discrimination in a society that is sex-related. Women tend to be treated differently as they are considered less than men. The inequitable treatments received by women trigger anxiety for them. World Health Organization (2017) data on the prevalence of anxiety disorder reflects a higher percentage of women having the condition than men in all regions. The statistic of the National Institute of Mental Health (n.d.) also has a similar correlation showing a higher prevalence of the illness in women (23.4%) than men (14.3%) in the US. This situation also works the same way when it comes to discrimination race-related; racism. Research by Soto et al. (2011) found a significant association between race-based discrimination with a general anxiety disorder for African Americans. For that, we can imply that discrimination as one of the problems in society corrodes the world's tranquility by creating situations that develop anxiety and worries for people.

To sum up, the disruption of world tranquility is caused by the three most remarkable factors namely nation conflicts, terrorism, and problematic society; besides, it leaves prevailing effects specifically anxiety disorder, deaths, and slighted people. The causes trigger anxiety in people and foment unstable conditions in their lives. On the other hand, the resulted phenomena negatively affect people both mentally and physically. All in all, the factors causing disturbance of tranquility in this world are taking away peace from people's lives. Meanwhile, the effects are creating severe conditions for people to deal with as the result of the evanescence of peace in the world. To reverse these trends, great respect for diversity embrace needs to enhance in all social aspects. Moreover, the priority on the sustainability of human life also has to be all nations’ goals to create a more peaceful and tranquil world. Sen (2012) argued in his Peace and Democratic Society that respect and understanding matter currently for three reasons; the prevalence, far-reaching effects, and persistence of today's world conflicts, the persistence of terrorism and the fear of it, the urgency of avoidance of human and environmental catastrophe resulted from the war.

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