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WE LIVE IN TIME OF HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHES

Fernando Alcoforado *

The twentieth century was characterized by Eric Hobsbawm as the "age of extremes", and its first half (1914-1945) an "era of catastrophes". Together the two world wars to the long years of the Cold War, genocide, massacres and ethnocide unveiled how the formal institutions of states to international organizations, not realized to prevent the man to be the " wolf of own man ", reaching the edge the very civilizational destruction.

Historically, in 2013 holds the most negative record of refugees in nearly seven decades. In 2013, according to the UNHCR (UN refugee agency), asylum seekers, internally displaced persons and refugees totaled 51.2 million people around the world for the first time since the post-World War II. Part of this result was driven by the civil war in Syria that has created more than three million refugees, as well as conflicts in Libya, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the long instability in Iraq.

With the rise of the Islamic State (Isis) in northern Iraq and Syria, the global number of refugees has increased significantly. The Isis advance raised the number of Iraqis fleeing to neighboring countries. This scenario is not exactly new, since there has been a rise in the number of global refugees in recent years. The story of the terrorist group Islamic State is related to the process of political crisis that was unleashed in Iraq following the invasion of US troops that began in 2003.

Historically, all the wars that have taken place throughout the history of mankind shows that one of its consequences is the emergence of refugees from conflict areas such as occurred during the Second World War in Europe. The recent wave of refugees has as Western powers most responsible led by the United States that occupied and disrupted Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, in addition to the attempted military intervention in Syria, among other countries. This makes it becomes imperative the end of disorder, of chaos that has characterized international relations throughout history.

Urges the creation of a new world order to be able to prevent wars and international conflicts which result in major humanitarian crises such as those that occur at this time. Rampant violence and crises which manifest themselves in various forms in the world we live in is caused by the world capitalist system. Therefore it is essential to break with the current model of development, capitalism, which has proved unable to regulate, much less, to prevent and overcome violence and crises that has created throughout its history.

The great challenge of the contemporary era is to make humanity progress from barbarism stage we are in at the time of the civilization. According to Eric Hobsbawm, the last 150 years, barbarism has increased permanently. Year by year, decade by decade, violence and contempt for the human being have increased seeming not to be a limit to this phenomenon. Something far worse: men and women have become accustomed to the barbarism there no longer wonder, strangeness, or horror face the inhuman acts. Marx wrote in 1847 this amazing and prophetic passage: "Barbarism reappeared, but this time it is engendered in the bosom of civilization itself and is an integral part of it is the leprous barbarism, barbarism as leprosy of civilization" [See Barbárie e modernidade no século 20 (Barbarism and modernity in 20th century) of Michael Lowy, published in Brazil by the newspaper "Em Tempo" -

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emtempo@ax.apc.org and originally in French, in the journal "Critique Communiste" No. 157, hiver 2000].

The First and Second World War established a new form of eminently modern barbarism, far worse in his murderous inhumanity of the practices of conquering warriors "barbarians" from the end of the Roman Empire. According to Eric Hobsbawm, the Great War (1914-1918) opens the bloodiest stage of world history. The year 1914 begins with the boundless sacrifices in the effort to eliminate the enemy. This sacrifice incorporating own civilian population. 1914 begins the era of total war, the lack of distinction between combatants and non-combatants [See the article by Eric Hobsbawm entitled La barbarie: guia del usuario (La barbarism: del guide User) at <http://pt.scribd.com/doc/50203686 / La-barbarism guide-del-User>]. From 1914 to 1990, killed 187 million people in warlike acts or systematic extermination.

Despite the repeated intentions of all countries of the world to maintain world peace, the twentieth century was the scene of two world wars. In World War I (1914-1918), died about 9 million people. Only twenty years later, broke out the Second World War (1939-1945), which killed between 40 and 52 million people. In addition, the violence of the conflict in our time has no parallel in history. The wars of the twentieth century were "total wars" against combatants and civilians without discrimination. The historian Eric Hobsbawm adds: "Without a doubt he was the most murderous century of which we have record, both in the scale, frequency and length of the war that filled it, barely ceasing for a moment in the 20s, as well as the single volume of the human catastrophes it produced, from the greatest famines in history to systematic genocide" [A Era dos Extremos (The Age of Extremes), Companhia das Letras, 2008).

The tragedy of wars in the twentieth century reached most families over two, three or four generations. The call to arms took millions of sons, husbands, fathers and brothers to the battlefield, and millions have not returned. The Nazi genocide against the Jews, gypsies and communists, the use of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Stalinist Goulag, the Vietnam War, the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York, the two Iraq wars, the war in Afghanistan, the recent civil wars in Libya and Syria and indiscriminate violence by the Islamic State exemplify the most complete way the barbarism that characterizes the world we live in. In this context of bleak prospects, it is urgent to attack the evil in the bud barbarism with the construction of a new civilized world order to replace the generating dominant capitalist order of attacks on civilization in all quadrants of the Earth that register for more than 500 years.

To cope with the contemporary barbarism and make peace prevail in international relations, we need to establish a world government that would aim to defend the general interests of humanity making them compatible with the interests of the people of every nation. The world government would work towards mediating international conflicts and build consensus among all nation states to make every national state respects the rights of its citizens, and seek to prevent the spread of global systemic risks. Without the emergence of a world government, international relations will be governed by the law of the jungle as it has been throughout the history of mankind. Mankind has to understand who has everything to gain by uniting around a democratic government in the representative world of all people that operate above the interests of each nation, including the most powerful, managing the world in its entirety, in time and space.

*Fernando Alcoforado, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor of Territorial Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, a university professor and

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consultant in strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona, http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora, Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012) and Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015).