Some violence is slow, quiet and built into how societies work
Most people picture violence as a sudden blow. Researchers also describe slow violence, gradual harm through pollution and degradation that may go unnoticed for years, and structural violence, where institutions stop people from meeting basic needs. Widening the lens this way changes what counts as harm and who is responsible.
The World Health Organization defines violence as deliberately using force or power, whether actually applied or only threatened, against yourself, someone else or a community, in a way that causes or is or is highly likely to result in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation. The definition deliberately includes acts that leave no physical wound.
The WHO sorts violence into three families. Self-directed violence is turned against oneself. Interpersonal violence happens between individuals or small groups, and can be divided by setting, such as home or work, by the kind of abuse, or by the ages involved. Collective violence is carried out by people acting as members of a group, from passing crowds to states, in pursuit of political, economic or social aims. Another classic split separates instrumental violence, used as a tool toward some goal, from hostile violence driven by anger.
Collective violence has its own varieties. Political violence ranges from community clashes to action by states, and its most extreme form is war, a prolonged, large-scale political conflict whose causes demand analysis of many factors at once. Economic violence aims at gain, for example by disrupting commerce or cutting off essential services. Anthropologists add the idea of everyday violence, in which political violence seeps into ordinary routines.
The costs are enormous. The Institute for Economics and Peace estimated the total economic impact of violence and conflict on the world economy in 2024 at 17.5 trillion dollars. Violence-related injuries were killing around 1.25 million people a year as of 2024, a level broadly similar to earlier decades, and the burden falls unevenly across and within countries. For comparison, the global toll from violence exceeds deaths from tuberculosis or from road traffic injuries.
Source: Violence
