Water shortage as a form of structural violence

As Gandhi saw, "the deadliest form of violence is poverty." The truth of Gandhi's generalization has been confirmed repeatedly by empirical research showing how death rates increase when poverty rates increase, in both cross-cultural and longitudinal studies. In fact, the difference in death rates suffered by poor nations, compared with wealthy ones, has been shown to be far greater than the death rates caused by all forms of violent behavior put together, including homicide, suicide and warfare. Johann Galtung and others, including the "liberation theologians" of Latin America , have coined the term "structural violence" to refer to the increased death rates that the poor suffer, relative to the rich, and have contrasted it with "behavioral violence." Why should we consider poverty a form of violence? If we define violence as the infliction of injury (especially lethal injury) on people by people, then we have to include the various forms of poverty, including lack of access to unpolluted water, as a form of violence, since it causes injury and death, and is caused by the actions of humans. Structural violence, however, is not only the deadliest form of violence, it is also the most powerful cause of the other form, behavioral violence (especially homicide and warfare). That is, cross-national and longitudinal research have also shown that rates of those forms of behavioral violence correlate positively with the rates of relative poverty suffered by the populations in question, including lack of access to natural resources that are necessary for life.