Throughout the developing world, justice systems - law enforcement, court systems, social services - have corroded and collapsed into utter dysfunction. Under-resourced, under-trained and potentially corrupt law enforcement cannot or will not arrest and charge criminals or gather evidence. Trials move at a glacial pace, files are lost, no efforts are made to mitigate trauma during the court process for survivors of violence, and hearings are often conducted entirely in official languages the poor can't understand, among other systemic absurdities. In fact, not only do the poorest not seek protection through their police and court systems, but they often actively avoid them because of the abuse they expect to experience from them.

 
When their justice systems do not work, nothing shields the poorest from violent people. As a result, the threat of being raped, robbed, assaulted and exploited is constant. According to World Bank data, for example, women and girls between the ages of 15 and 44 are more at risk of being killed or disabled by gender violence than by cancer, car accidents, malaria and war combined. In surveys, the poor frequently name violence as their "greatest fear" or "main problem." For them, vulnerability to violence is just as much a part of being poor as illness, malnutrition, dirty drinking water or inadequate education. 

   
This overwhelming vulnerability to everyday violence doesn't just destroy lives,  it also blocks the road out of poverty and undermines development. Consider what happens to efforts to overcome poverty when violence is an everyday threat. According to the World Health Organization, school is the most common place for sexual violence for massive populations of poor girls in the developing world, eroding the opportunity of education. Likewise, a micro-loan can't significantly change life for an impoverished woman if the proceeds of her farmland can just be stolen away by a more powerful neighbor or if she is one of the millions of women chased from her home each year, nor can a medical clinic help build the healthy foundations families need to succeed if those families are among the nearly 30 million people swept up into forced labor slavery in our world. This is not to say that these development efforts are unimportant; rather, they are so important that they must be safeguarded from being laid to waste by violence.