The goal of the Violence and Development Project is to encourage the social work profession to investigate and integrate into its training and practice the issue of violence as a global affliction and sustainable human development as an antidote.
Violence operates at many levels.
Its viciousness manifests not only in the individual acts of violence portrayed so constantly in the media, but also at the institutional, systemic, and international levels, where groups and targeted categories of people endure chronic harms, injustices, and hardships. Examples of systemic harm include economic exploitation and poverty, unequal treatment under the law, prevalent human rights violations, and repressive military actions. These more insidious, often socially accepted harms frequently lay the groundwork for outbursts of individual or group violence that erupt in seemingly disconnected circumstances worldwide. Successful and sustainable human development allows communities to come together and address the problems they face at all levels to permanently improve their situations. Examples of development projects that meet and surpass their goals abound in the nations of the southern hemisphere, as well as in struggling communities in the United States.