The human cost of Geopolitics: How clashes between powers claim innocent lives

Geopolitical and geoeconomic conflicts have ceased to be mere territorial or ideological disputes and have become battles that devastate the daily lives of millions of people. While governments negotiate sanctions, military alliances or trade routes, it is civilians who pay the highest price. In Sudan, more than twelve million people have fled their homes since 2023, fleeing a war that seems to have no end. This figure not only represents the largest displacement crisis today, but also an example of how political instability translates into human tragedy.

Geoeconomics, understood as the use of economic tools for strategic purposes, has intensified these sufferings. International sanctions, trade boycotts, and the reconfiguration of supply chains not only affect targeted regimes, but collapse the most vulnerable local economies. In Yemen, the naval blockade and restrictions on imports have made access to food and medicine an unattainable luxury for most. Meanwhile, commodity prices are skyrocketing, and hunger becomes a more effective weapon than any missile.

The collapse of health systems is one of the most invisible but devastating consequences of these confrontations. In Sudan, eight out of ten main hospitals have stopped working due to lack of staff, supplies or bombing. This means that severely malnourished children, pregnant women or war-wounded women die from preventable causes. The interruption of medical care not only kills in the present, but leaves lasting scars: outbreaks of cholera, measles and other preventable diseases return with a vengeance when epidemiological surveillance disappears.

Education , another pillar of human development, becomes collateral damage of these wars. Millions of children in Myanmar, South Sudan or Afghanistan have missed school years, perpetuating cycles of poverty and violence. Schools are occupied by militias, teachers flee or are killed, and families, in their struggle to survive, see education as a luxury they cannot afford. This lost generation not only represents a humanitarian failure, but also a social time bomb: young people with no future are easy recruits for armed groups or criminal networks.

Global economic fragmentation, driven by rivalry between powers such as the United States and China, has added a dangerous new dimension. Forced "deglobalization" not only makes products more expensive, but also creates exclusionary economic blocs. African or Latin American countries are forced to choose sides, losing access to crucial markets, investments or technologies. This new economic Cold War has no clear borders, but its effects are felt in every neighborhood store where bread is short or in every hospital without antibiotics.

Forced migration is perhaps the most visible symptom of this disaster. Refugee camps in Chad, Jordan or Colombia are full of families who are not looking for a better life, but simply to survive. But these massive flows also destabilize the receiving countries, which lack the resources to absorb them. Ethnic tensions, competition for water or land, and the collapse of public services make refugees easy scapegoats, fueling new conflicts. Thus, violence is reproduced like a virus that jumps from border to border.

Paradoxically, while civilians die, the industries of war thrive. Arms sales have skyrocketed, with powers supplying equipment to both sides of proxy conflicts (1). Private security companies multiply their contracts, and armed groups control key trade routes, from gold mines to pipelines. The plundering of natural resources has become an engine of war: in eastern Congo, the coltan (2) we use on our cell phones finances militias that systematically rape and murder. Every Western consumer is unknowingly complicit in this chain of suffering.

In the face of this devastation, the international response remains insufficient and selective. While some conflicts receive media attention and humanitarian aid, others, such as those in Sudan or Tigray, remain forgotten. Multilateral institutions, paralyzed by vetoes by Security Council members, are seeing international laws systematically violated. Until the global community understands that the security of a peasant in Darfur is connected to the stability of the entire world, we will continue to repeat this never-ending story: wars that begin in palaces and end in anonymous graves.

(1) In geopolitics, a proxy conflict (or proxy war) is one in which states, powers, or external groups support – with weapons, money, training, intelligence, or propaganda – local or regional sides, but without openly compromising their own armed forces.

(2) Coltan is short for columbite-tantalite, a black or brown metallic mineral that contains two key metals: Tantalum (Ta) – essential for making  very small capacitors that store a lot of energy without losing it; that's why it's used in mobile phones, laptops, consoles, cameras, cars, airplanes and medical equipment (pacemakers, hearing aids) and Niobium (Nb) – it's used in Steel alloys that withstand high temperatures, e.g. in reactor turbines, rockets and gas pipelines